US 7646796 B2
A laser. The novel laser includes a gain medium, a pump source adapted to optically excite the gain medium in a first location, and a resonator adapted to extract energy from the gain medium in a second location distinct from the first location. In an illustrative embodiment, the gain medium is comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles suspended in a fluid. The gain medium is adapted to flow, and optical excitation of the gain medium occurs outside of the resonator. In a preferred embodiment, the flow velocity and the density of gain particles in the gain medium are adjusted for optimal absorption efficiency during optical excitation and then for optimal extraction efficiency in the resonator. In addition, the resonator may be shaped for optimal extraction efficiency, while pump modules that hold the gain medium during optical excitation are shaped for optimal absorption efficiency.
1. A laser comprising:
a gain medium comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles suspended in a fluid;
a resonator for extracting energy from said gain medium;
a pump module for containing part of said gain medium during optical excitation, wherein said pump module is located outside of said resonator;
first means for providing and directing optical energy into said pump module to optically excite said gain particles; and
second means for flowing said gain medium from said pump module to said resonator at a controlled flow velocity such that a mean transit time of said gain particles to travel through said pump module and to and through said resonator is less than a fluorescence lifetime of said gain particles.
2. The invention of
3. The invention of
4. The invention of
5. The invention of
6. The invention of
7. The invention of
8. The invention of
9. The invention of
10. The invention of
11. The invention of
12. The invention of
13. The invention of
14. The invention of
15. The invention of
16. The invention of
17. The invention of
18. The invention of
19. The invention of
20. The invention of
21. The invention of
22. The invention of
23. The invention of
24. The invention of
25. The invention of
26. A laser comprising:
a gain medium comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles suspended in a fluid;
one or more pump modules for containing part of said gain medium during optical excitation;
a pump source for providing and directing optical energy into said pump modules to optically excite said gain particles;
a resonator for extracting energy from said excited gain particles, wherein said pump modules are located outside of said resonator; and
a mechanism for flowing said gain medium from said pump modules to said resonator at a controlled flow velocity such that a mean transit time of said gain particles to travel through said pump modules and to and through said resonator is less than a fluorescence lifetime of said gain particles.
27. A laser system comprising:
a gain medium comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles suspended in a fluid;
one or more pump modules for holding said gain medium during optical excitation;
a pump source adapted to direct optical energy into said pump modules to optically excite said gain particles;
a resonator adapted to receive said gain medium from said pump modules and extract energy from said gain particles, wherein said pump modules are located outside of said resonator;
a flow mechanism for flowing said gain medium from said pump modules to said resonator at a controlled flow velocity such that a mean transit time of said gain particles to travel through said pump modules and to and through said resonator is less than a fluorescence lifetime of said gain particles;
a recycling mechanism for receiving said gain medium from said resonator and returning said gain medium to said pump modules;
a fluid ejection mechanism for ejecting fluid from said gain medium after exiting said resonator and before entering said pump modules such that a density of said gain medium is increased to a desired level for optimal absorption efficiency during optical excitation; and
a fluid injection mechanism for injecting addition fluid into said gain medium after exiting said pump modules and before entering said resonator such that a density of said gain medium is reduced to a desired level for optimal extraction efficiency in said resonator.
28. The invention of
29. The invention of
This Application is a Divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/915,229, entitled SOLID-STATE SUSPENSION LASER filed Aug. 10, 2004 now abandoned by Alexander A. Betin et al., the teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optical systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to solid-state lasers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Weapon-class lasers are required to have the highest possible power per weight ratio in order to fulfill requirements for a variety of airborne and ground tactical applications. The implementation of a high-energy weapon-class laser system is currently limited to large platforms due to the relatively low power per weight ratio numbers in the present approaches.
Prior attempts to implement a weapons class laser range from the chemical laser to the diode-pumped solid-state power oscillator (PO). The chemical laser is a highly complex system and typically takes up a good portion of the available real estate in an aircraft. In addition, the chemical handling makes this an extremely cumbersome and undesirable approach. The relatively clean diode-pumped solid-state laser approach is much more desirable.
Solid-state lasers, however, have their share of problems. These devices typically require active (or passive) phase conjugation techniques to compensate for high beam distortion generated as the laser propagates through the amplifier chain. In addition, the gain elements themselves are currently comprised of complex, composite slabs that are very expensive and prone to damage. Large size solid-state laser active media are required for power/energy scaling of laser systems, but such media is difficult to fabricate. The number of potential materials for the gain medium is also reduced, since some materials cannot be grown to the sizes needed for a high-energy laser. Furthermore, the large size of the gain medium makes it harder for thermal management to extract heat out of the medium. The large gain medium also makes it more difficult to control optical uniformity, making it harder to control laser beam quality. Finally, the MOPA approach limits the ultimate optical (and, therefore, the overall) conversion efficiency, which results in increased power and wastes heat extraction real estate.
One high-energy solid-state PO laser is the multiple disk heat capacity laser. This laser uses multiple disks of smaller size gain media instead of a single, large bulk medium. Thermal management, however, remains a problem for this approach. The laser can only operate for a few seconds before it needs to be cooled. The smaller gain media disks are faster to cool than a single bulk medium, but several minutes could still be needed for cooling before the laser can be reactivated. In addition, pumping for the multiple disk laser can be difficult to arrange.
Another solid-state approach is the fiber laser. Fiber lasers have inherently high efficiencies because they allow for 100% pump power absorption and operate at very high laser intensity, and can be cooled efficiently due to their inherently high surface to volume ratio. Fiber lasers, however, are ultimately limited by the maximum power at which they can operate due to intensity damage threshold limits. In order to generate higher powers, several fibers need to be combined. This, however, requires phasing of multiple fiber oscillators, which adds a number of problems (not satisfactorily solved yet) and associated complexities.
Hence, a need exists in the art for an improved solid-state laser that is scalable for high energy and power, and that offers better optical quality, easier fabrication, and improved thermal management than conventional approaches.
The need in the art is addressed by the laser of the present invention. The novel laser includes a gain medium, a pump source adapted to optically excite the gain medium in a first location, and a resonator adapted to extract energy from the gain medium in a second location distinct from the first location. In an illustrative embodiment, the gain medium is comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles suspended in a fluid. The gain medium is adapted to flow, and optical excitation of the gain medium occurs outside of the resonator. In a preferred embodiment, the flow velocity and the density of gain particles in the gain medium are adjusted for optimal absorption efficiency during optical excitation and then for optimal extraction efficiency in the resonator. In addition, the resonator may be shaped for optimal extraction efficiency, while pump modules that hold the gain medium during optical excitation are shaped for optimal absorption efficiency.
Illustrative embodiments and exemplary applications will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings to disclose the advantageous teachings of the present invention.
While the present invention is described herein with reference to illustrative embodiments for particular applications, it should be understood that the invention is not limited thereto. Those having ordinary skill in the art and access to the teachings provided herein will recognize additional modifications, applications, and embodiments within the scope thereof and additional fields in which the present invention would be of significant utility.
As is well known in the art, a laser typically includes a gain medium disposed in a resonator, and a pump source. The gain medium is excited to a higher energy state by the pump source, and the resultant emitted fight is bounced back and forth within the resonator, triggering further stimulated emissions. The laser gain medium can be a solid-state, liquid, gas, or semiconductor. The present invention relates to solid-state lasers. Solid-state lasers typically use a gain medium that is comprised of active lasing ions distributed in a solid matrix (a crystalline or glass host material). Common solid-state media include Nd:YAG (neodymium doped yttrium-aluminum-garnet), Yb:YAG (ytterbium doped yttrium-aluminum-garnet), Nd:glass (neodymium doped glass), Er:glass (erbium doped glass), Yb:glass (ytterbium doped glass), and others. A conventional solid-state gain medium is usually in the form of a-solid rod of doped glass or crystal. In contrast, the novel laser of the present invention uses a lasing medium comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles suspended in a fluid host.
In accordance with the present teachings, the gain medium 12 is comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles 26 suspended in a fluid 28. The suspension gain medium 12 may be held within a container 30 formed from an optically transparent material, such as glass. The gain particles 26 can be fabricated from any material capable of lasing, including conventional solid-state gain media such as Er:glass, Yb:glass, Nd:glass, Nd:YAG, Yb:YAG, and others. In an illustrative embodiment, the particles 26 are solid-state micro-sphere gain elements (the particles 26 can actually be of any arbitrary shape without departing from the scope of the present teachings), having diameters on the order of microns (or smaller) to millimeters. The small individual micro-sphere gain element size greatly relaxes the manufacturing requirements for fabricating a laser gain medium, leading the way towards high energy laser scaling. This also greatly expands the range of laser active medium materials that can be used in the fabrication process; non-traditional gain host media such as less robust crystals (MgF2, CaF2, BaF2, etc., for example) can be utilized. Low thermal conductivity laser active media, such as based on glass materials, can be used. Ceramics materials can be used as well.
In addition, since the laser gain medium is now comprised of a large number of small particles, the gain surface area becomes very large relative to the volume. The much higher (orders of magnitude compared to bulk media) surface area to volume ratio in the lasing volume greatly improves waste heat removal and thermal management, which may also lead to relaxed cooling support infrastructure requirements (reduced weight and volume).
The solid-state gain particles 26 are suspended in a fluid host 28. The fluid 28 can be any material capable of suspending the particles 26, and capable of transmitting the pump radiation 22 and the laser energy 24 (i.e., optically transparent). The host fluid 28 may be a cryogenically cooled liquid to help with thermal management and improvement of overall laser performance. In an illustrative embodiment, the fluid 28 is a liquid host having a refractive index matching that of the gain particles 26. Note that although the gain particles 26 may be suspended in a liquid host 28, the gain medium itself is solid-state, not liquid. The fluid 28 acts as an inactive host, while the pumping and laser energy extraction occurs in the solid-state gain particles 26. Therefore, solid-state laser physics apply.
While the gain medium of the particles 26 can be of any lasing material, some solid-state hosts provide for more favorable laser physics properties and refractive indices for matching to robust, available index-matching fluids. Consider as an example an Yb or Er doped solid-state host. The table below lists potential solid-state hosts for Er or Yb gain ions and corresponding index matching suspension fluid candidates:
As can be noted, there are a variety of solid-state gain host/suspension fluid combinations that can be employed for this implementation. The glass-based approach can leverage the maturity of the fiber optics and fiber laser technology as well as the availability of relatively robust index-matching liquids. The refractive index, n, of glass can be tailored or controlled with an accuracy of Δn<10−4, using technologies developed for fiber-optic products. The Er: and Yb: glass laser gain media have favorable properties for implementation in the laser system of the present invention. Manufacturability of fibers as well as micro-spheres from this material is well established. In addition, pump diode sources as well as proper index matching liquids are available for this solid-state host. The resonantly pumped Yb:glass (or Er:glass) laser also provides for a low quantum defect efficient laser (less energy is wasted in the transition between pump absorption and laser extraction, which minimizes the heat load). The refractive index match can be tailored and maintained by varying and controlling the operating temperature due to refractive index temperature dependence. For instance, several degrees in temperature change may lead to about 10−3 change in refractive index of liquid.
The illustrative embodiment shown in
In the illustrative embodiment shown in
This remote pumping approach allows for efficient conformal geometrical matching to the pump source layout such that both the absorption efficiency as well as the transit time can be optimized. Because of the decoupled pump geometry (from the laser resonator 14), a much relaxed cooling implementation of the diode pump sources 20 can be effected. The mean transit time across the pump radiation field 32 and to and through the resonator 14 should be less than the fluorescence lifetime of the upper laser level (ideally, about ⅕th the fluorescence lifetime). The capability of alloying almost free reign in the geometrical layout of the pump diode sources 20 allows the implementation of a single master resonator approach. This eliminates the need for amplifier chains that usually reduce efficiency and adds complexities to a laser system.
This implementation allows for reasonable mean fluid transport velocities even for a multi-kilowatt class laser. The most relaxed requirements can be anticipated for the laser materials with longer fluorescence radiation lifetimes, like Er:glass for instance, which has τ≈8 m sec. Assuming that the suspension gain medium travel time through a resonator cannot be more than τ/10 in order to avoid the loss of stored laser energy from the pumped upper laser level, then a rough estimate of the laser output power Pout can be made using a simplified formula given by:
It is interesting to estimate the power Pkin related to the kinetic motion of the suspension gain medium and compare it to the output power Pout, using the estimating formula:
For other laser materials with relatively short fluorescence lifetimes, like Nd:glass or Yb:glass where they are 0.3 ms and 1 ms, respectively, this remote pumping approach may not be as favorable, especially when desired output power is high. In this case, the approach where the pumping and resonator regions are overlapped may be preferable. Of course, the suspension gain medium flows in this case as well. In general, this approach may lead to very high output powers and one of the limiting factors here is a temperature rise in the gain medium, which depends on flow rate also. The following estimating formula cam be used to assess the relation between the mass flow rate and the temperature rise:
In addition, various image rotating techniques can be implemented to compensate for gain non-uniformity across the cross-flow direction. Non-uniform gain cross-section compensation techniques are known in the art for high-energy gas dynamic lasers and other high power lasers. These techniques can be applied to the present invention. An example is illustrated in
With a laser designed in accordance with the present teachings, a high optical quality active medium (gain and refractive index uniformity) can be achieved by optimizing the geometry and velocity of the flow, gain particle size, fluid-to-particle refractive index match, etc. This assures the possibility of the generation of a near diffraction limited laser output beam.
An analysis follows on how particle size, gain, and refractive index mismatch may impact laser beam quality. For this, the distortions in intensity and phase distribution that a laser beam may experience after propagating through an amplifying medium such as a transparent liquid with suspended gain carrying micro-spheres are estimated.
Different optical rays, such as rays 1 and 2 as shown in
As a numerical example, let L=1000 mm, ρ0.3, and
Next, a requirement for refractive index mismatch is estimated in order to sustain a near uniform/flat phase of the amplified laser beam after passing through the amplifier. The difference in optical path or phase, δφ=φ1−φ2, between rays 1 and 2 is expressed as:
Small phase fluctuations lead to almost flat or uniform phase of the amplified laser beam, assuring good beam quality:
The smaller the particle diameter, the larger refractive index mismatch can be tolerated. As an example, let λ1.5 μm, L1000 mm, p0.3, and Δn104. This results in the estimated requirement: d<80 μm. The same example but with Δn10−3 leads to d<0.8 μm.
Thus, the novel laser of the present invention is based on a lasing medium comprised of a plurality of solid-state gain particles (micro-spheres, in an illustrative embodiment) suspended in a fluid host that doubles as the dynamic transport medium and cooling interface. This approach features an inherently high surface to volume ratio (even higher than in a fiber laser) for efficient waste heat extraction. The index-matched fluid suspension allows for efficient transport into a mode-matched laser resonator chamber for optimized efficiency, and takes advantage of fluid-state dynamic heat extraction and exchange mechanisms for waste heat extraction (removing the need for complex jet-impingement coolers for solid-state slabs, which required additional cumbersome liquid handling heat exchange systems). In addition, the laser system of the present invention takes full advantage of inherently efficient diode-pumped solid-state laser action with a simple electrical to laser photon conversion laser mechanism. This approach provides for a venue to drastically improve (increase) output power (Watts) per kg so as to allow weapon class lasers to be deployed on a variety of airborne platforms. The use of small gain carrying particles eliminates the need for complex fabrication of large size laser active media.
Thus, the present invention has been described herein with reference to a particular embodiment for a particular application. Those having ordinary skill in the art and access to the present teachings will recognize additional modifications, applications and embodiments within the scope thereof.
It is therefore intended by the appended claims to cover any and all such applications, modifications and embodiments within the scope of the present invention.