Damage produced by the free electron laser
By: by Lee R. Short
Publisher: Naval Postgraduate School; Available from National Technical Information Service
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Monterey, Calif; Springfield, Va
Language: eng
Number of pages: 599
Description: The first damage experiments produced by a Free Electron Laser were conducted at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF). In the past, only large scale laser experiments were thought to properly model lasers for weapons applications. Scaled down procedures developed in this thesis allowed the FEL, with a few hundred watts of power, to characterize the damage produced by a megawatt weapon's scale laser. With a power density of 10 kW/cm2, the TJNAF FEL bombards targets with a steady stream of tens of millions of pulses per second. Each pulse contains 50 MW of power in short bursts lasting 4 x 10.14 seconds each. No previous laser experiments have been conducted to explore the effects of the FEL short pulses. Target materials were obtained from the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Port Hueneme. Data were collected and analyzed using video cameras and optical microscopes, and irradiated at TJNAF. This thesis was a productive cooperation between NPS, TJNAF, and NSWC Port Hueneme, to the benefit of DOD.
Notes: "June 1999"

Thesis advisor(s): William B. Colson, Robert L. Armstead.

Thesis (M.S. in Applied Physics) Naval Postgraduate School, June 1999.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 57)

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.

Also available online.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements: Adobe Acrobat reader.

US Navy (USN) author.

dk/dk cc:9116 10/22/99