High-speed photography and gated photography using CuBr laser image-brightness amplifier

A sealed-off and compact CuBr laser was used to be an image-brightness amplifier in high-speed photography and high-speed microphotography. The 20 ns/16 kHz amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from a mirror-less CuBr discharge tube was used to illuminate the target and the brightness of its image was amplified by the same discharge tube. It is shown that the relatively weak illumination from ASE is strong enough to be recorded every laser shot on a 100 ASA film and would be useful in the study of the biology samples. A gated high-speed photography was demonstrated using a normal CuBr laser to illuminate a target at long distance and its image was amplified by another CuBr discharge tube. The image-brightness amplifier acts not only as an atom resonance filter, but also a distance-selective device by controlling the relative delay time of these two discharge tubes. Such a gated high-speed photography technique may be useful in the underwater imaging.© (1995) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.