High-power transverse flow CW CO2 laser for material processing applications

A transverse flow transversely excited (TFTE) CW CO₂ with a maximum output power about 15 kW has been developed. This is excited by pulser sustained DC discharge applied between a pair of multi-pins anodes and a common tubular cathode. Though the laser power in convective cooled CO₂ laser scales proportionally with the volumetric gas flow, it did not increase in this laser when the volumetric gas flow was increased by increasing the electrode separation keeping the flow velocity constant. The discharge voltage too remained almost unchanged with increase of the electrode separation. These observations are explained considering the electrical discharge being controlled by ionization instability. Laser materials processing applications often demand programming facilities for laser power modulation. A four-stage cascaded multilevel DC–DC converter-based high-frequency switch mode power supply has been developed to modulate the output power of the laser. Laser was operated up to 15 kW output power in four different modes viz. continuous wave mode, pulse periodic mode, single shot mode and processing velocity-dependent power mode with 1.2 kHz modulation bandwidth. We describe briefly the laser system, the SMPS, and the temporal behavior of laser beam.     

Fabrication of the high power input coupler for BEPCⅡ superconducting cavities

The BEPCII storage ring adopts two 500 MHz superconducting cavities (SCC). Each one is equipped with a 500 MHz input power coupler. The coupler is to feed 150 kW power in continuous wave (CW) mode with both standing and traveling wave modes. Due to high power feeding and high frequency of the coupler, its fabrication is a big challenge. The fabrication started with two key components, the window and the antenna. Up to now, two sets including windows and antennas have beam made by IHEP. And a 270 kW RF power in CW has passed through the coupler during the high power test. The fabrication details are presented in this paper.     

Fabrication of the high power input coupler for BEPCⅡ superconducting cavities

The BEPCII storage ring adopts two 500 MHz superconducting cavities (SCC). Each one is equipped with a 500 MHz input power coupler. The coupler is to feed 150 kW power in continuous wave (CW) mode with both standing and traveling wave modes. Due to high power feeding and high frequency of the coupler, its fabrication is a big challenge. The fabrication started with two key components,the window and the antenna. Up to now, two sets including windows and antennas have been made by IHEP. And a 270 kW RF power in CW has passed through the coupler during the high power test. The fabrication details are presented in this paper.     

1 mJ Passively Q-switched Nd:YAB laser using a V:YAG crystal

We describe the design and operation of a diode-pumped compact and efficient Nd:YAB laser operating at 1338 nm. We use a passive Q-switch V:YAG crystal to achieve 1 mJ Q-switched pulses at the laser output. The laser elaborated provides an average power of 1.5 W in the CW regime and 1 W in Qswitched mode with an optical efficiency of 15 and 10%, respectively. A 65 mm plano-concave cavity is formed with an output in the TEM₀₀ mode. At a pulse width of 15 ns, the achieved peak power is 66 kW.     

Long-pulse and CW tests of a 110-GHz gyrotron with an internal,quasi-optical converter

A high-power gyrotron, employing an internal converter that produces a Gaussian-like output mode, has been designed and tested. The tube employed a TE_22.6.1-mode interaction cavity that was designed for operation at a frequency of 110 GHz. An internal converter, consisting of an advanced launcher design and four mirrors, produced a Gaussian mode that had a relatively uniform profile at the tube output window to minimize the peak power density. Tests on the tube resulted in output power levels of 680, 530, and 350 kW for pulse durations of 0.5, 2.0, and 10.0 s, respectively. Measurements of the temperature of the output window were made during the long-pulse tests. Output power levels of 1 MW were achieved under short-pulse (1 ms) operation and the tube was operated at CW power levels in excess of 100 kW     

Performance Test of CW 300?GHz Gyrotron FU CW I

A 300 GHz CW gyrotron FU CW I has been developed and installed in the Research Center for Development of Far-Infrared Region, University of Fukui as a power source of a high frequency material processing system. Its performance was tested and the maximum power of 1.75 kW / CW has been attained at the beam voltage of 15 kV and the beam current of 1A. The maximum window power efficiency of 15.5% has been obtained at the cathode voltage slightly lower than 15 kV. This gyrotron is designed to deliver a Gaussian beam after mode conversion from the oscillation mode TE_22,8 in the cavity with a complex of an internal radiator and beam shaping mirrors. The detailed measurement with an infrared camera has confirmed that a Gaussian beam is radiated when the magnetic field strength B _c at the cavity is adjusted at a proper value. However, within a range of B _c , the output power is emerged into multiple directions, which suggests simultaneous oscillation of competing cavity modes.     

Development of 170 GHz/500 kW gyrotron

A development of 170GHz/500kW level gyrotron was carried out as R&D work of ITER. The oscillation mode is TE_31,8. In a short pulse experiment, the maximum power of 750kW was achieved at 85kV/40A. The efficiency was 22%. In the depressed collector operation, 500kW/36%/50ms was obtained. The maximum efficiency of 40% was obtained at P_RF=470kW whereas the power decrease by the electron trapping was observed. Pulse extension was done up to 10s at P_RF=170kW with the depressed collector operation. The power was limited by the temperature increase of the output window.     

A 250?GHz, 50?W, CW Second Harmonic Gyrotron

A design concept of a 250 GHz, ≈ 50 W, CW, second harmonic gyrotron for spectroscopy will be presented in this paper. Mode competition, in particular with regard to competition with first harmonic modes, and mode selection procedures are carefully investigated by considering various candidate modes and the TE_6,2 and TE_6,3 modes are chosen as probable operating modes. Cold cavity and self-consistent calculations of power and efficiency are carried out to determine optimum parameters for these two modes. The results indicate that an output power of well over 50 W, CW can be achieved.     

A 100 kW, 140 GHz pulsed gyrotron

The design and operation of a 100 kW, 140 GHz pulsed gyrotron are reported. To our knowledge, this is the highest frequency at which high gyrotron output power (>-100 kW) has been achieved. Results are presented for gyrotron operation in the range of magnetic field from 4 to 7 T, voltage from 23 to 80 kV and current up to 7.5 A. Near a value of magnetic field of 5.4 T, and output power of 100 kW was obtained at 140.4 GHz in single mode operation in the TE₀₃₁ resonator mode.     

Development of a 500 MHz high power RF test stand

A flexible high power RF test stand has been designed and constructed at IHEP to test a variety of 500 MHz superconducting RF components for the upgrade project of the Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPCⅡ), such as the input coupler, the higher order modes (HOMs) absorber and so on. A high power input coupler has been conditioned and tested with the RF power up to 250 kW in continuous wave (CW), traveling wave (TW) mode and 150 kW CW in standing wave (SW) mode. A prototype of the HOMs absorber has been tested to absorb power of 4.4 kW. An introduction of the test stand design, construction and high power tests is presented in this paper.     

Passively mode-locked Yb:LYSO laser with a reflection type single-walled carbon absorber

Passively diode-pumped Yb:LuYSiO₅ (Yb:LYSO) laser mode locked by reflection-type single walled carbon nanotubes saturable absorber (RSWCNT-SA) is reported for the first time. Under the absorbed pump power of 13.23 W, continuous wave (CW) mode-locked pulses were generated with the maximum average output power of 157 mW. We obtained pulses as short as 4.0 ps around a center wavelength of 1038.3 nm. The peak power and the single pulse energy of the mode-locked laser were 0.38 kW and 1.52 nJ, respectively.     

Study of LD pumped Q-switched Nd:Y<Subscript>0.5</Subscript>Lu<Subscript>0.5</Subscript>VO<Subscript>4</Subscript> laser with acousto-optic modulator

A laser-diode (LD) pumped Q-switched Nd:Y_0.5Lu_0.5VO₄ crystal laser with an acousto-optic (AO) modulator is presented in this paper. The maximum continuous wave (CW) output power of 5.53 W is achieved at the incident pump power of 14.09 W with the transmission of 10% for the output coupler, resulting in an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 39.2%. For Q-switching operation, the shortest pulse width of 8.3 ns and the highest peak power of 259 kW are generated under the incident pump power of 14.09 W at 1 kHz.     

Development of 394.6 GHz CW Gyrotron (Gyrotron FU CW II) for DNP/Proton-NMR at 600 MHz

Gyrotron FU CW II with an 8 T liquid He free superconducting magnet, the second gyrotron of the THz Gyrotron FU CW Series, has been constructed and the operation test was successfully carried out. It will be used for enhancing the sensitivity of 600 MHz proton-NMR by use of Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP). The designed operation mode of the gyrotron is TE_2,6 at the second harmonic. The corresponding frequency is 394.6 GHz. The real operation frequency is 394.3 GHz at TE₀₆ mode, because of fabrication error of the diameter of the cavity. The operation is in complete CW at the output power of around 30 W or higher at the TE₀₆ cavity mode. There are many other operation modes at the fundamental and the second harmonic. Typical output power of the fundamental and the second harmonic are higher than 100 W and 20 W, respectively. The highest frequency observed up to the present is 443.5 GHz at the second harmonic operation of TE_6,5 mode. The measured results are compared with the theoretical consideration.     

高功率CW锁模Nd:YAG激光器动力学特性研究

本文对具有热效应的锁模激光器的动力学特性进行了研究。采用内腔声光振幅调制器对CW Nd:YAG激光器进行锁模,在泵浦功率为3.5千瓦时,获得了平均功率达10W的锁模激光输出,其脉冲幅值稳定度优于4%。     

High-power diode-end-pumped CW Nd:GdVO4 laser

We report on a high-power diode-end-pumped CW Nd:GdVO₄ laser. Under the pump power of 39.5 W, a maximum output power of 19.8 W and a slope efficiency of 58.5% were obtained. The beam quality M² at maximum output power was measured to be around 2.62. The thermal focal length in Nd:GdVO₄ crystal under the pump power from 22 to 40.6 W was measured. The pump-induced damage threshold was estimated to be 28.6 kW/cm².     

INVESTIGATION ON 16 W ULTRAHIGH FREQUENCY CW MODE-LOCKED Nd: YAG LASER

The cavity configurations designing and the experimental results of a 200MHz CW actively mode-locked Nd:YAG laser are reported. Arid 26W CW output and 16W CW mode-locked output power were obtained at a single lamp pumped power of 3.5kW, with pulse duration 100 ps.     

Performance of actively Q-switched Nd:LiLuF<Subscript>4</Subscript> crystal end-pumped by a 792 nm laser diode

An efficient laser diode end-pumped continuous-wave (CW) and AO Q-switched laser of Nd:LiLuF₄ crystal with dual central wavelengths of 1053.1 and 1054.7 nm is reported for the first time. The maximum CW output power of 6.22 W was obtained at absorbed pump power of ∼14.6 W with the output transmission of 2%. The optical conversion efficiency is ∼43%, corresponding to a slope efficiency of about 48% with respect to the absorbed pump. For the Q-switched operation, the shortest pulse width of 17 ns was obtained at the pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 0.5 kHz, resulting in a pulse energy of 2.24 mJ and peak power of 131.8 kW.     

Continuous-wave and Q-switched Operation of a Tm,Ho:YAP ring laser

We demonstrated continuous-wave (CW) and Q-switched operation of a Tm,Ho:YAP ring laser at 77 K. The maximum CW output power of 2 W at 2130.7 nm was obtained under the incident pump power of 12 W, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 23% and an optical-to-optical efficiency of 16.7%. For the Q-switched regime the maximum output energy of 5 mJ with the pulse width of 160 ns at the repetition rate of 100 Hz was achieved, corresponding to a peak power of 31.25 kW.     

High power and efficiency of a 2044-nm c-cut Tm, Ho:YAlO3 laser

A high power and efficiency of c-cut Tm, Ho:YAlO₃ (YAP) laser is reported in the paper. The laser operated in continuous wave (CW) mode or Acousto-optical (AO) Q-switched mode at 2044 nm. The Tm, Ho:YAP crystal was cooled at the temperature of 77 K and pumped by a fiber-coupled laser diode (LD) with the centre output wavelength of 794.8 nm. In CW operation, a 9.30-W output power was obtained at a 150-mm physical cavity length, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 42.5%. In Q-switch mode, the output average power of 9 W was achieved at the pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of 10 kHz with a 130-ns pulse width. Moreover, the energy per pulse of 3.54 mJ in 47 ns was acquired at 2.5 kHz with a 75.3-kW peak power.     

A forced gas-cooled single-disk window using silicon nitride composite for high power CW millimeter waves

Silicon nitride composite as a candidate of a window material for high power CW (Continuous Wave) millimeter-waves was high power tested especially with a surface cooling by impinging gas nitrogen jets on the single-disk surface. Gas-cooling dramatically suppressed the temperature of the window disk even with gas flow rate of around 100 l/min. With gas cooling of 465l/min., 130kW CW power of HE₁₁ mode could be transmitted through the silicon nitride window with a diameter of 88.9mm. The peak window temperature was completely saturated on 123.6 °C. Without gas-cooling it did not saturate and reached 323 °C during 30 seconds pulse. A possibility of 1MW CW single disk Brewster windows with a forced gas-cooling is discussed, resulting in convinced prospects of the windows with realistic size and thickness.