Advanced Chemical Iodine Lasers for the ABL

The primary objective of CU Aerospace's Phase II work will be to experimentally characterize the ElectriCOIL flow using advanced diagnostics and to demonstrate lasing of this electrically assisted chemical iodine laser. CU Aerospace (CUA) and theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) believe that it is possible to construct a highly efficient electric generation scheme to provide the precursor energy donor species O2(1D) with a combination of direct current and RF discharge techniques.The CUA/UIUC team has set up a flow tube experiment that combines a pulse direct current pre-ionization coupled with a more conventional cw RF discharge. The innovative combination of these techniques will provide a steady state source of O2(1D). Anadditional advantage to the discharge technique is the creation of significant quantities of the O2(1S) state that can assist in the process of dissociating molecular iodine. Such an electronically produced O2(1D) generator will be even more effective ifimplemented simultaneously with an atomic iodine augmentation technique; this implementation will also be performed in Phase II.