Overview

Copper and gold vapor lasers are the most important members of a family of neutral metal vapor lasers which emit in or near the visible region. They are unusual in their high power and high efficiency in this region, and in that their normal operation is at repetition rates of several kilohertz (the internal physics prevent continuous-wave emission). Commercial copper vapor lasers can emit over 100 watts in the green and yellow; gold vapor lasers can generate several watts in the red. These high average powers make copper and gold vapor lasers attractive for applications including pumping dye lasers, detection of fingerprints and trace evidence, and certain biomedical procedures.

The copper vapor laser was first demonstrated in 1966 by W.T.Walter, N.Solimene, M.Piltch, and Gordon Gould at TRG Inc. (Walter et al., 1966). The laser s high efficiency was recognized even then, but the need to heat the tube to 1500 to 1800 C to get high enough copper vapor pressures presented severe technical difficulties. In the early 1970s, Soviet workers showed that waste heat from the laser discharge could heat the tube, raising overall efficiency (Isaev et al., 1972). Others studied the use of copper halides, which do not require such high temperatures (Chen et al., 1973).

Commercial copper vapor lasers based on discharge heating have been developed partly as an outgrowth of technology developed for laser isotope separation at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Copper vapor lasers were chosen as the best candidate for pumping high-power dye lasers tuned to...