Custom made Copper Chloride Laser (CuCl)

[Laserbuilder]

Some time ago I visited my fellow glassblower and he made this laser tube for me from fused quartz. It has two side arms for placing copper halide in them an electrodes taken from linear flashlamps. I placed then the copper chloride that had unknown purity and quality. It had already changed colour to green, it indicated that CuCl partially turned in CuCl2. The active part of the tube with the side arms is surrounded by ceramic wool for thermal insulation. The active medium is 20 cm long and 12 mm wide. Anyway, I attached the vacuum pump and neon supply to the nipples of the tube set the neon flow at 10-15 Torr pressure and energised it with my "Lightsaber" CVL power unit. The copper chloride de-watered quickly and after warm up I saw unexpectidly bright superradiant lasing. The input power was around 1 kW with PRR 12 kHz. There was no special double-pulse timing, only continiously following pulses with high repetition rate. The optical cavity was absent. At these conditions the lasing power I would estimate about several hundreds of mW, like 100-200. The spot was too wide to be tightly focused, but I felt it quite hot on my skin.

 

[paul1598419]

Hey, it's been awhile. Nice to see you posting again. Great looking tube and excellent luck with the CuCl. I always enjoy looking at your builds.

 

[mojo_1234]

impressive! very impressive! how you've managed to achieve a puls repetition rate of 12 kHz? Years ago I also tried to build a CuCl laser stuck in getting two quite fast pulses.

 

[Laserbuilder]

I achieved this by using high power fast hydrogen thyratron, which is driven by a smaller thyratron. The master oscillator is built on vacuum tubes. more information is in my CVL thread (Lightsaber copper vapour laser)

 

[laser1975]

Some time ago I visited my fellow glassblower and he made this laser tube for me from fused quartz. It has two side arms for placing copper halide in them an electrodes taken from linear flashlamps. I placed then the copper chloride that had unknown purity and quality. It had already changed colour to green, it indicated that CuCl partially turned in CuCl2. The active part of the tube with the side arms is surrounded by ceramic wool for thermal insulation. The active medium is 20 cm long and 12 mm wide. Anyway, I attached the vacuum pump and neon supply to the nipples of the tube set the neon flow at 10-15 Torr pressure and energised it with my "Lightsaber" CVL power unit. The copper chloride de-watered quickly and after warm up I saw unexpectidly bright superradiant lasing. The input power was around 1 kW with PRR 12 kHz. There was no special double-pulse timing, only continiously following pulses with high repetition rate. The optical cavity was absent. At these conditions the lasing power I would estimate about several hundreds of mW, like 100-200. The spot was too wide to be tightly focused, but I felt it quite hot on my skin.
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hello congratulations for all your good work really amazing, do you have videos of this laser working that I can share please?