The proposed high-energy laser technology would offer a step-up in power and energy from our existing products. A MPS Nd:YLF laser with 100 mJ/pulse fundamental energy, 1-kHz rate and high beam quality, with the addition of harmonic generation for some systems, could provide a relatively low-cost solution for precision machining applications such as marking, cutting, welding and drilling, of interest to the electronics, automotive and medical-device industry.
The work proposed here has direct application to the development of aircraft and satellite-based ozone DIAL systems. Other NASA applications for the pump source would be in precision altimetry for earth and other planetary investigations. The pump source, combined with other nonlinear optics, could also serve as the DIAL transmitter for probing of other species than ozone. In particular, combined with optical parametric oscillators, the source we develop could provide broadly tunable infrared for sensing of a wide variety of molecular species.
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