Francois Prinsloo

Imperial College London | Imperial · Section of Investigative Medicine

A high power 1kW pulsed transversely excited atmospheric CO2 laser that has been developed for the paint stripping of missiles was used to test paint stripping on several metallic and composite aircraft panels to determine the rate at which this laser could remove paint from aircraft.

Published in the Proceedings of SPIE the International Society for Optical Engineering High pressure CO2 lasers are good candidates for amplifying picosecond mid infrared pulses. High pressure CO2 lasers are notorious for being unreliable and difficult to operate. In this paper a high pressure CO2 laser is presented based on well developed LC-inver...

A theoretical and experimental study investigated beam perturbations on propagation through a MOPA chain, including both optical and medium influences. Analytical models are presented to explain the influence of thermal aberrations on the beam, and these effects are related directly to the change in M 2(quality factor) of the beam.

The development of a high repetition rate TEA-CO2 laser chain has a number of difficulties that must be overcome. One of these difficulties is to predict the free space propagation of the beam. A low energy (approximately 100 mJ/pulse), high-quality, carbon-dioxide beam is amplified in a number of carbon-dioxide amplifiers to more than 1 J per puls...

A CO2 master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) laser chain has been developed capable of producing approximately 2J per pulse at 2kHz. This leads to a unique combination of high peak and average power in a single laser system. As the laser is to be used in a process where it must be capable of prolonged periods of operation, a method had to be devi...

To obtain economical extraction of 235U in the molecular laser isotope separation (MLIS) process, 16-micrometers laser beams must be generated in parahydrogen Raman cell with high repetition rates and sufficient intensity. Because the intensities of the 16-micrometers laser beams are dependent on the intensity of the incoming pump laser beams, the...

A continuously tunable 3-atm mixed isotope CO2 oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) chain is developed for a molecular laser isotope separation pilot plant. The characteristics of this laser such as tunability bandwidth, and output energy are reported. A closed loop gas flow system with a catalyst is employed and its performance is reported.

The controlled radiation from a TEA CO2 laser is important in many applications. One of the important parameters is its bandwidth and a simple technique for fast measuring and monitoring it is presented.

XVI International Symposium on Gas Flow, Chemical Lasers, and High-Power Lasers, edited by Dieter Schuöcker, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 6346, 63463B, (2007) 0277-786X/07/$18 doi: 10.1117/12.739382 High pressure CO2 lasers are good candidates for amplifying picosecond mid infrared pulses. High pressure CO2 lasers are notorious for being unreliable and...