Performance of laser ablation propulsion with a high-repetition rate and high-power laser

Abstract

We investigated the propulsive performance of laser ablation propulsion using a high-power and highly repetitive pulsed laser. We demonstrated 100 shots of burst laser irradiation with an aluminum target using repetition frequencies of 0.017 Hz and 1 kHz. The impulse and plasma exhaust velocities were measured using a pressure sensor and an orifice probe. The momentum-coupling coefficient and the specific impulse were estimated from the aforementioned measurements for every shot. The results showed that the momentum-coupling coefficient increased with highly repetitive laser irradiation. The specific impulse increased with increasing shot number for the case of high-repetition frequency. Therefore, high-repetition operation improves the propulsive performance, especially the specific impulse.