Solid State Laser Providing Efficient Conversion to the UV for Proliferation Detection

78807 The remote detection of chemical signatures for nuclear proliferation, requires a pump laser capable of driving a tunable ultraviolet light source. The pump laser must be compact and efficient, and produce a very high quality beam. This project will build a pump laser with a relatively new laser material, Yb:S-FAP, developed by the DOE at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Yb:S-FAP allows higher efficiency than more common laser materials. Because it can store higher energy densities without parasitic losses, the laser aperture can be made smaller, facilitating high beam quality extraction and making the whole laser system more compact. The pump laser will fit in a 20 x 30 cm footprint, while achieving high efficiency and excellent beam quality. Phase I will design, build, and demonstrate a laser that provides the full energy, repetition rate, and beam quality required for this application. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: Diode-pumped solid-state lasers, similar to the system to be developed in this project, should have broad commercial applications including medical, materials processing, and defense. The new pump laser should be significantly less costly than conventional approaches, because the use of Yb:S-FAP allows a drastic reduction in the number of laser diodes, the most costly components in these types of lasers.