Solid State Seed Laser for COIL

The Air Force Phillips Laboratory is seeking approaches for demonstrating frequency agile COIL (chemical oxygen iodine lasers) operating near 1.31 microns and at 10 kHz rep rates. Frequency conversion approaches must be capable of handling high average power levels, greater than 10 kWatts. Converting a COIL device to high peak powers will be necessary for frequency conversion. The approach proposed uses injection seeding with an all solid state, tandem, bulk periodically poled LiNbO (sub 3) (PPLN) scheme to provide MLQS pulse trains from the coil device. This Phase I effort will build on Aculight's commercial PPLN product line and will be able to fabricate and test the COIL seeder as part of this Phase I program because of this existing capability. The Phase I work will determine the seeding parameters of bandwidth, pulse energy and frequency control necessary. A fully stabilized and packaged seed source will be provided as part of the Phase II effort or parallel funding path. With seeding to MLQS operation in hand, the program will evaluate both solid state and gas Raman conversion approaches for COIL. In Phase II these conversion schemes will be tested at average power conditions.