Electro-gas-dynamic CO lasers with combustion products: a new scientific direction to the creation of the industrial high-power lasers

Abstract

An industrial high-power laser is a technical system to be characterized primarily by the efficiency. For a high-power laser system to become like an industrial one the efficiency must be more than 10%. As is well known a steam-engine has such an efficiency. In welding and in cutting thick materials to provide required power density in a spot for the device with long focus the value of output power of radiation must be no less than 100 kW at beam divergence 10 -3 rad. At the present time there is a problem in concurrent fulfillment of the requirements on an output power, the divergence, and the efficiency as well as the requirements on the stability of output parameters, total resource of operation, the safety of operation, and the use of standard components. A line of attack on this problem is proposed by the present author through the use of continuous formation of a CO laser mixture by combustion of a chemical fuel and the use of atmospheric air as a buffer gas (up to 80%), which is cooled in supersonic nozzles followed by excitation in a radio-frequency (rf) electric discharge without an electron gun. A small-scale model system of electrogasdynamic CO laser was used by the present author and his colleagues to demonstrate for the first time the laser radiation was possible in a system with combustion products and air. A technical proposal for a multipurpose self-contained industrial cw high-power CO laser system is proposed. This laser system is based on standard electrical machinery with a gas-turbine drive without ejecting toxic CO into the atmosphere.