Copper vapor laser operated by a solid state switch

A 5 kpps copper vapor laser (CVL) switched by semiconductors has been demonstrated for the first time. The solid state power exciter consists of static induction (SI) thyristors and two stage magnetic pulse compression circuits with saturable inductors. The maximum electric efficiency was 67%. The exciter showed the high transfer efficiency in the input energy range of 2.9kW to 6.5kW by optimizing the reset currents for saturable inductors. The average laser power was 21W at a 5kpps repetition rate. An overall system jitter for synchronization was successfully reached down to a very small value of +/- 2.5ns.