High-pressure pulsed COIL assisted with an instantaneous production of atomic iodine

Abstract

A new strategy for pulse oscillation of chemical oxygen-iodine laser based on a combination of a porous pipe SOG with an instantaneous atomic iodine generation, has been developed to seek the potential of COIL as an amplifier of the nuclear fusion driver. This new scheme allows one to produce a large aperture high pressure laser medium, which is favorable to the laser amplifier, while maintaining a minimum degradation of stored energy by water vapor. The experimental apparatus consists of the porous pipe SOG, an iodine donor (CH3I) injector, a flash lamp for the iodine dissociation, and an optical resonator. Operational characteristics of the apparatus including dependence of output energy on an iodine concentration was studied. As the result, the maximum output energy of 800mJ was obtained. It was also found that the CH3I was dissociated through unidentified chemical reaction associated with the 02(1A).

New concepts of realizing a chemical oxygen laser

“…However since developing such a high-flow-rate SOG is not easy, pulsed operation of a COIL may be much easier. [22][23][24] Nevertheless a COL is attractive because increasing the laser output energy is easy by simply increasing the active volume. But in order to avoid optical damage, near concentric cavity may be necessary to enlarge the beam size at the mirrors.…”