what is the most powerful kind of laser? (and other laser questions)?

Question

Does it give off excessive amounts of radiation? (would you need some sort of protection) How does it work? (basic explanation)

Answer 1

The most powerful laser in the world right now is at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Its power is measured in terawatts and it is used to study nuclear fusion.

After that, the next most powerful types would be the chemical lasers being developed by the military as weapons. One of these will be used for the Airborne Laser and its power is well into the megawatts (though the exact wattage is classified). This is a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL). This and other similar lasers produce laser action by the reaction of two different chemicals.

In the civilian world, the laser that can generate the most power would be the carbon dioxide laser. These were also used in the past for possible development into weapons but were soon surpassed in power and ease of operation by the chemical lasers. Powers were well into megawatts, especially for the gas dynamic CO2 laser, which functioned more like a rocket engine than a typical gas laser.

" The largest known laser for industrial use produces 120 kW continuous (for up to 1 hour at a time) - it's located at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard and is used for welding aircraft carrier hulls. It's capable of doing a full-penetration weld 12" deep at 100 IPM. This laser is also huge - about the size of a 3 bedroom house." (http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserco2.htm#co2ccy)

After that you have solid-state lasers, which are gaining in power and (at least for use as weapons) are expected to one day be nearly as powerful as today's chemical lasers. These are usually ND:YAG or ND:Glass lasers.

As for protection, technically you should have eye protection while using any laser over 5 milliwatts - that's the garden variety laser pointer. Anything more powerful than that is capable of causing blindness, in some cases instantly. Once you get into class 4 lasers (anything over a half a watt) you'll need skin as well as eye protection.

Answer 2

Of course, light is radiation, so yes they give off radiation. In fact the intensity of a coherent gaussian beam from a laser can be many, many times the intensity of sunlight. Typically lasers are classified by their power, industrial lasers used for cutting being the most powerful I'm aware of. Eye protection is required, (for visible light lasers anyway, there are infrared and ultraviolet lasers and even x-ray lasers) since the beam is very intense, and your eyes will amplify that intensity. Looking into a beam can permanently blind you. As far as how they work, there really is no simple explanation, but I'll try. The key is part is a resonating cavity (a simple one is two conductors (mirrors) placed a specific distance apart to produce a standing wave inside the cavity -hence it is a resonator). Inside this cavity, there is some type of gain medium, which can be a crystal, gas or semiconductor. The gain is from stimulated emission of radiation , which means exited atoms are stimulated by the radiation resonating in the cavity and emit the same (coherent) radiation. Since as this generated radiation is coherent (which means it has about the same phase, frequency, and polarity) It all stays in a neat little beam. Pretty cool stuff, I think.

Answer 3

LASER is actually an acronym for something -- don't know what. All I know is that it involves taking a beam of regular white light and manipulating it so that all the different rays of white light (which are of different wavelengths) are concentrated into one beam of light where all the rays are of uniform wavelength. The first laser involved shooting light through a ruby and using a couple of mirrors to manipulate/concentrate the light. Nowadays lasers are a dime a dozen. Laser beams do give off radiation (the R at the end is for radiation, I remember that much), but it's not a concern in the same way that nuclear radiation is. Might be a problem if someone is pointing a laser right at you and holds it there, but other than that...Don't know which type of laser is the most powerful, but I know that blue lasers are powerful enough to cut through metal (and they produce a lot of heat -- they have to be water-cooled at some outrageous rate like 200 gallons a minute or something like that).

Answer 4

From Wikipedia:

LASER: (from the acronym of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) is an optical source that emits photons in a coherent beam. The back-formed verb to lase means "to produce laser light" or possibly "to apply laser light to".


Try the link below for more information, also the second link to How Stuff Works, which has a good long article on them (see all the links at bottom of page for all parts of article).

Hope this helps!

Answer 5

Laser weapons are high priced to construct. they have short selection, and consume various capacity - no they don't have limitless ammo considering the fact which you are able to furnish capacity on your laser weapons. electric powered capacity is extra high priced than gun powder so utilising weapons is simpler.