New fiber materials and hollow waveguides that would be able to transmit these wavelengths are being investigated by several groups. Cutting experiments involving various reactor materials have been performed in Russia with high power CO 2 lasers. Loop phase conjugation techniques are under development by several groups to improve the beam quality at these high powers. New Ytterbium-doped solid state lasers, at similar wavelengths, are also being developed. These devices offer higher efficiencies, but they also suffer from thermal distortions in the media, though some groups describe plans for megawatt devices.
COIL also couples well with the wide variety of materials used in nuclear facilities.
In addition, the weapon systems, which are at the multimegawatt level, used hard optic delivery systems, so we are investigating high power fiber delivery techniques. This was done by the Air Force COIL researchers at Kirtland AFB, where COIL was invented in 1977. However, Kawasaki recently transmitted a 7-kW COIL beam through 20 meters of fiber for more than 10 minutes. Japanese researchers have also run a lower power COIL device for an eight-hour period. As you can see, the Japanese obviously see a large commercial market for an industrial COIL device.