Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Barnes, N. P..
Injection Seeding of a Ti:Al2O3 unstable resonator using both a pulsed single-mode Ti:Al2O3 laser and a continuous wave laser diode has been characterized. Results are compared with a theory which calculates injection seeding as function of seed and resonator alignment, beam profiles, and power.
Solid-state dye lasers, pumped by a doubled Nd:YAG laser, were evaluated as a function of concentration, output coupler reflectivity and oscillator dimensions. A slope efficiency of up to 62 pct was achieved. A maximum irradiance of 59 MW/sq cm to the dye laser cavity was achieved.
A laser-material database and laser-modeling software system for designing lasers for laser-based Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) systems are presented. The software system consists of three basic sections: the database, laser models, and interface software. The database contains the physical parameters of laser, optical, and nonlinear materials required by laser models. The models include efficiency calculations, electrooptical component models, resonator, amplifier, and oscillator models, and miscellaneous models. The interface software provides a user-friendly interface between the user and his personal data files, the database, and models. The structure of the software system is essentially in place, while future plans call for upgrading the computer hardware and software in order to support a multiuser multitask environment.
The database contains the physical properties of laser, optical, and nonlinear materials used by the laser models of a laser-modeling software system. The database is subdivided into two parts: spectra and tabulated data. The spectra are ASCII files of laser-material's absorption and emission spectra, and laser-diode's emission spectra. The tabulated data contains physical properties of laser, optical, and nonlinear materials, including crystalline, thermal, and mechanical properties. A menu-driven interface allows the execution from a personal directory where the user can store files containing input parameters for a specific model or the results of model's calculations.
The 2 - 5 micron (mid-IR) region is of interest for a number of applications. Efficient up-conversion and down-conversion techniques are being developed to obtain optical sources at mid-IR wavelengths. These techniques are reviewed and recent results using AgGaSe2 are reported. Gain in AgGaSe2 as high as 13 has been observed with a pump wavelength of 1.73 microns and a signal wavelength of 3.39 microns. Optical parametric oscillation in the 2.9 - 6.8 micron region has also been demonstrated.