The copper-pumped dye laser system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Atomic Vapor Isotope Separation (AVLIS) Program has developed a high-average-power, pulsed, tunable, visible laser system. Testing of this hardware is in progress at industrial scales. The copper-dye Laser system is prototypical of a basic module of a uranium-AVLIS plant The laser demonstration facility (LDF) system consists of copper vapor lasers arranged in oscillator-amplifier chains providing optical pump power to dye-laser master-oscillator-power-amplifier chains. This system is capable of thousands of watts (average) tunable between 550 and 650 mm. The copper laser system consists of 12 chains operating continuously. The copper lasers operate at nominally 4.4 kHz, with 50 ns pulse widths and produce 20 W at near the diffraction limit from oscillators and >250 W from each amplifier. Chains consist of an oscillator and three amplifiers and produce >750 W average, with availabilities >95% (i.e., >8300 h/y). The total copper laser system power averages [approximately]9000 W and has operated at over 10,000 W for extended intervals. The 12 copper laser beams are multiplexed and delivered to the dye laser system where they pump multiple dye laser chains. Each dye chain consists of a master oscillator and three or four power amplifiers. The master oscillator operates at nominally 100 mW with a 50 MHz single mode bandwidth. Sustained dye chain powers are up to 1400 W with dye conversion efficiency >50%, ASE content <5%, and wavefront quality correctable to <[lambda]/10 RMS, using deformable mirrors. The dye laser system is capable of repetition rates which are multiples of 4.4 kHz, up to 26 kHz.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 6274486
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-111378; CONF-930159--35; ON: DE93014429
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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AMPLIFIERS
CONFINEMENT
COPPER
DYE LASERS
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
ELEMENTS
EQUIPMENT
FUNCTION GENERATORS
GAS LASERS
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
ISOTOPE SEPARATION
LASER ISOTOPE SEPARATION
LASERS
LIQUID LASERS
METAL VAPOR LASERS
METALS
PERFORMANCE
PLASMA CONFINEMENT
POWER AMPLIFIERS
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
SEPARATION PROCESSES
TRANSITION ELEMENTS