Abstract:
Conventional high-power lasers operate in either continuous wave or long pulse mode. They interact with materials mainly through heating, whose effects are very limited when working with complex targets. We propose a novel high-power laser technology based on the combinations of continuous and pulse lasers with adjustable pulse widths and repetition frequencies. Such a “heating/shock” function can be used to improve the effect of high-power laser by aiming the best time-domain eigenvalues of melting and gasification of various target materials. We have achieved output power of 4800 W with 3600 W from continuous wave operation and 1200 W from pulsed operation with repetition rate of 10 kHz and pulse width of 3.6 ns. When the repetition rate is increased to 100 Hz, the resultant output power of the 7 ns pulsed laser is 1820 W, while the power of the continuous laser is 3100 W, and the beam quality is 4.8 times of the diffraction limit.