Cost Effective, Scalable, Optically Pumped Molecular Iodine Laser

An electrically powered, optically pumped molecular iodine laser is proposed. The important advantages that this laser concept offers include superior beam quality, efficiency, wavelength agility, and a wide range of power scaling making it useful for avariety of DOD missions. These include communications, countermeasures, and tactical weapons. In this approach, the molecular iodine is optically excited by well-developed, highly efficient optical sources such as doubled solid-state lasers, laserdiodes, or doubled fiber lasers. Laser output is selectable in the range of 500 nm to 1350 nm yielding a wavelength agile source. The iodine laser gas medium can effectively act as a beam-combining medium, where it combines the output from numerous pumpaperatures into a single coherent beam. This beam-combining feature provides a route to rapid power scaling using an incoherent array of individually coherent pump sources.