Laser Pointer Forums - Discuss Laser Pointers | High Power Lasers

I just completed a new video describing some techniques for constructing your own flash lamps. You can choose to fill them with a variety of gases and at different pressure levels. Because these are flow through tubes, the vacuum requirements are minimal. You can trigger them with an external wire, over voltaging with a switching element such as a spark gap or even intermittent pump down to reach a low enough pressure that they spontaneously over voltage.

Despite their seeming simplicity, there are some interesting physics taking place when these are operated at low pressures and very high energies. The explosion energy for these lamps is somewhere north of 150% of the accepted standard for medium pressure flash lamps (the usual xenon flash lamp pressure range in commercial lamps). The lamp impedance is around four times lower than commercial lamps allowing them to reach much higher peak output powers. The resulting high color temperatures require special techniques when taking advantage of these lamps to drive high performance lasers. I'll discuss that in a future video.

Thanks for watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_1bH4yabk