Metal atom oxidation lasers
Exploding wire and film techniques for metal atom production have been extraordinarily successful in producing laser action from exothermic exchange reactions of the form M + XY yields MX* + Y. To date, lasing has been observed from CO, TiO, VO, ZrO, MoO, TaO, WO, UO, LiF, CF, MgF, AlF, TiF, VF, FeF, NiF, CuF, ZnF, ZrF, MoF, AgF, TaF, WF, PtF, AuF, and UF molecules in the ir region of the spectrum. Explosively shocked metal structures have been used to provide jets of metal atoms that have also produced lasing from MgF. This result corroborates the assertion that the lasing from the exploding wire event is chemical in origin, and it provides an alternative technique for possible future development. Very preliminary work on cw metal jets was performed. It was possible to operate a sodium nozzle into a flow of fluorine gas for 40 min using a high-thermal-conductivity structure to supply sodium vapor to the nozzle plenum. A larger multinozzle system is now being assembled. Future work in metal atom oxidation lasers is expected to produce electronic transition lasers and much new data on basic chemical kinetics. The important possible applications of this class of lasers are development of low-gain systems operating on triplet yields singlet transitions and capable of very large energy storage for pulse laser applications, and development of high-efficiency cw lasers in the infrared. (auth)
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- NSA Number:
- NSA-29-028941
- OSTI ID:
- 4337029
- Report Number(s):
- LA-5452
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Orig. Receipt Date: 30-JUN-74
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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