A laser amplification device includes a laser oscillator that includes a first laser active medium including a mixed gas containing carbon dioxide gas and emits pulsed laser light with the full width at half maximum of between 15 ns to 200 ns, and a laser amplifier that includes a second laser active medium including a mixed gas containing carbon dioxide gas through which the pulsed laser light emitted from the laser oscillator passes to be shortened to pulsed laser light with the full width at half maximum of between 5 ns and 30 ns to be output.

The present invention provides a blue laser transmitter operating at the H-beta Fraunhofer line at 486.13 nm wavelength. The subject blue laser is based on pulsed lasing action in thulium doped into lutetium sesquioxide (Tm:Lu.sub.2O.sub.3). The laser wavelength is restricted by volume

Bragg grating to the vicinity of 1944 nm wavelength. The laser is operated with a q-switch to generate high-energy pulses within the nanosecond regime. The output at the 1944 nm wavelength is then frequency quadrupled in a single pass through non-linear crystals to a wavelength near the center of the H-beta Fraunhofer line. The operation at the 1944 nm wavelength in Tm:Lu.sub.2O.sub.3 is very efficient because this wavelength is located on a shoulder of a substantially broad emission peak at 1945 nm. In addition, at the 1944 nm wavelength, Tm:Lu.sub.2O.sub.3 has only a modest saturation fluence of about 15 J/cm.sup.2, which allows for efficient energy extraction.

A light source apparatus (200) includes a gas discharge stage (210) and a metal fluoride trap (300). The gas discharge stage includes an optical amplifier (206) and a set of optical elements (250, 260). The optical amplifier includes a chamber (211) configured to hold a gas discharge medium (213), the gas discharge medium outputting a light beam. The set of optical elements is configured to form an optical resonator around the optical amplifier. The metal fluoride trap is configured to trap metal fluoride dust generated from the gas discharge stage. The metal fluoride trap includes an electrostatic precipitator (320) and a packed-bed filter (400, 402, 404) disposed around the electrostatic precipitator. The packed-bed filter includes a plurality of beads configured (406, 408) to absorb metal fluoride dust (208).

An apparatus may include a diode-pumped solid-state laser oscillator configured to output a pulsed laser beam, a modulator configured to modify an energy and a temporal profile of the pulsed laser beam, and an amplifier configured to amplify an energy of the pulse laser beam. A modified and amplified beam to laser peen a target part may have an energy of about 5J to about 10 J, an average power (defined as energy (J) x frequency (Hz)) of from about 25 W to about 200 W, with a flattop beam uniformity of less than about 0.2. The diode-pumped solid-state oscillator may be configured to output a beam having both a single longitudinal mode and a single transverse mode, and to produce and output beams at a frequency of about 20 Hz.

The laser system may include a delay circuit unit, first and second trigger-correction units, and a clock generator. The delay circuit unit may receive a trigger signal, output a first delay signal obtained by delaying the trigger signal by a first delay time, and output a second delay signal obtained by delaying the trigger signal by a second delay time. The first trigger-correction unit may receive the first delay signal and output a first switch signal obtained by delaying the first delay signal by a first correction time. The second trigger-correction unit may receive the second delay signal and output a second switch signal obtained by delaying the second delay signal by a second correction time. The clock generator may generate a clock signal that is common to the delay circuit unit and the first and second trigger-correction units.

A system includes a master oscillator configured to generate a low-power optical beam. The system also includes a planar waveguide (PWG) amplifier configured to receive the low-power optical beam and generate a high-power optical beam having a power of at least about ten kilowatts. The PWG amplifier includes a single laser gain medium configured to generate the high-power optical beam. The single laser gain medium can reside within a single amplifier beamline of the system. The master oscillator and the PWG amplifier can be coupled to an optical bench assembly, and the optical bench assembly can include optics configured to route the low-power optical beam to the PWG amplifier and to route the high-power optical beam from the PWG amplifier. The PWG amplifier could include a cartridge that contains the single laser gain medium and a pumphead housing that retains the cartridge.

A laser irradiation method of irradiating, with a pulse laser beam, an irradiation object in which an impurity source film is formed on a semiconductor substrate includes: reading fluence per pulse of the pulse laser beam with which a rectangular irradiation region set on the irradiation object is irradiated and the number of irradiation pulses the irradiation region is irradiated, the fluence being equal to or larger than a threshold at or beyond which ablation potentially occurs to the impurity source film when the irradiation object is irradiated with pulses of the pulse laser beam in the irradiation pulse number and smaller than a threshold at or beyond which damage potentially occurs to the surface of the semiconductor substrate; calculating a scanning speed Vdx; and moving the irradiation object at the scanning speed Vdx relative to the irradiation region while irradiating the irradiation region with the pulse laser beam at the repetition frequency f.

Orbital debt is removal (ODR) systems under the present approach may use a ground- or surface-based FEL and mirror system with sufficient power and both spatial and temporal resolution to both locate Category II OD (1 cm to 10 cm diameter) in low Earth orbit (LEO, 160 to 2000 km altitude) and remove these objects from orbit. Locating the Category II OD is performed by having, the light beam from an FEL and its beam director scan a volume of space of interest and then observing the light reflected from the OD. Removing the OD may include heating the OD to a sufficiently high temperature to evaporate the OD, changing the orbit of the OD such as to lower the perigee, or both. Megawatt-class MOPA FELs for, inter alia, removing OD, are described.

A laser amplifier device including an amplification element which includes a solid-state gain medium including a first main face and a second main face separated from each other by a distance which is smaller than the lateral dimensions. A heat spreader is thermally connected to, and substantially covering, the first main face. The heat spreader is optically transparent to a pump light and is in thermal contact with a heat sink. A first reflector substantially covers and faces the first main face and a second reflector substantially covers and faces the second main face; the reflectors being configured to reflect the pump light. The heat spreader and the first reflector are arranged such that the pump light passes through the heat spreader and through the first reflector and is reflected multiple times across the amplification element, between the first and second reflectors.

The invention relates to a device (10) for amplifying a laser pulse which comprises a divider section (14) for dividing the laser pulse into multiple sub pulses (43) and for introducing a time delay between the sub pulses (43), a compressor section (15) for compressing the temporally divided sub pulses (43) and a combiner section (17) for combining the compressed sub pulses (44) to one compressed laser pulse (45).