Page 22 - High Power Laser Handbook

Preface

ver the past decade, extraordinary progress has been made
in all aspects of high-power laser development. Technologi-
Ocal advances in gas, solid-state, fiber, free-electron, chemical,
and semiconductor lasers have enabled unprecedented power, effi-
ciency, beam quality, and reliability. Concurrent with—and often
driving—this progress in laser source development has been an in-
creased penetration of lasers into a diverse range of commercial, mil-
itary, and scientific applications, from traditional laser machining to
more esoteric applications, such as directed-energy weapons.
Understanding the state of the art in high-power laser technology
is critical not just for laser engineers but also for systems engineers,
optical designers, applications engineers, and technical managers.
Too often an applications engineer or system designer may consider
the laser source a “black box,” without having any real understand-
ing of the mechanisms involved in generating and emitting photons.
In many cases, this lack of awareness of the inherent advantages or
limitations of a given laser technology may result in a suboptimal
design.
This book presents a series of newly written chapters that have
been solicited from recognized leaders in each technical area. The
intent of this compilation is to provide a wide-ranging snapshot sur-
vey of the current state of the art in high-power laser development.
The approach is principally phenomenological, with the goal of pro-
viding readers with an intuitive understanding of the key features of
various laser technologies, while leaving fundamental physical deri-
vations to the referenced literature for the interested reader. The
intent of this streamlined approach is to allow for a greater breadth of
coverage of high-power laser technologies and applications than is
typically available in a single volume.
Specifically, the goals of the book are as follows:
• To describe typical and state-of-the-art performance para-
meters for each major class of lasers

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