Innovative High-Energy Lasers for Missile Defense

This small business innovation research is aimed to generate tens of mJ pulse energy in a pulse width of 12 mJ pulse energy in a width of < 10 n-sec at Q-switching rates ranging from 0.4 to 10 kHz. Because fiber laser has very high optical conversion efficiency and does not require cooling, it is suitable for space-borne system applications. Under Phase I a conceptual design analysis for a high-energy pulsed fiber laser utilizing multicore fiber laser technology will be performed with the emphasis on the fiber architecture and fast Q-switching techniques to achieve highest pulse energy in very short duration. Another key issue to be addressed in Phase I is the power damage at the active region due to very high peak intensity (~ 4 GW/cm2). To alleviate this problem, the silica fiber material quality must be greatly improved, because 4 GW/cm2 is far below the intrinsic material damage threshold of pure silica.