Singlet Delta Oxygen Generator Based on Optically Pumped Supercritical O2

"We propose a revolutionary approach to high power laser development offering the potential for compact table-top 100kW laser devices. Our approach is based on the direct electro-optical (diode) pumping of supercritical (SC) oxygen to efficiently generatehigh fluxes of O2(a1Delta) for advanced atomic iodine laser systems. The generator maintains all the advantages of single line, 1.315 micron laser transmission but without the heavy, aqueous based fuels found in COIL or the highly unstable azide fuels inAGIL. The generator simply uses supercritical oxygen as a fuel and electro-optical devices such as diode and fiber lasers to excite the O2(a1Delta). Using supercritical oxygen reduces the risk in electro-optical oxygen excitation systems by eliminatingthe requirement for rapid phase changes in liquid oxygen while still maintaining high density, broadband excitation, enhanced optical coupling and long SDO lifetimes. Near perfect beam quality is delivered by heat removal by optical medium flow across theresonator. Waste heat from diode thermal control and optical medium heating is rejected in a warm air effluent or recycled in a heat exchanger. With current state of the art fiber lasers, a 20 kW laser device is foreseeable in the immediate future, withscaling 100 kW and higher devices are possible. The high power, supercritical Singlet Delta Oxygen (SDO) generator technology developed from this effort could be delivered to the AFRL f