High Power, Tunable, Electrically Driven 1580 nm Laser

"We propose a revolutionary approach to high power laser development offering the potential for compact table-top 100kW laser devices. Our approach includes an air driven, high power, tunable, electrically/optically pumped laser operating at a centerfrequency of 1580nm. A high pressure molecular oxygen/nitrogen mixture (air) is optically excited by efficient diode or fiber laser sources to a state of inversion on the singlet delta - triplet sigma transition in molecular oxygen at 1580 nm. Nearperfect beam quality is delivered by heat removal by optical medium flow across the resonator. Waste heat from diode thermal control and optical medium heating is rejected in a warm air effluent or recycled in a heat exchanger. Research on the generationof the active medium has recently achieved a two order of magnitude increase of the excited state density of the active species, singlet delta oxygen (SDO). This density supports gain of 1 %/cm in the active medium. With current state of the art fiberlasers, a 20 kW laser device is foreseeable in the immediate future, with scaling 100 kW and higher devices are possible. The high power, eye-safe 1580 nm laser will find application in areas the folowing areas: femtosecond machining, welding, and cutting.Other defense oriented programs include ABL, and SBL. In addition, singlet Delta Oxygen (SDO) has been shown to have significant commercial potential in a number of areas. These include chemic