Focused homemade nitrogen laser?

air

have

How does input energy scale with the size of laser tube?

Bob Clark

I would expect it to be linear. However, it's not only the energy, but the timing - getting the excitation pulse to be in sync with the light pulse is not trivial over any distance.

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They 'could'; but given the very rapid discharge needed, it will have to be transverse excited, & either a rather complicated delay system & one spark gap, or lots of spark gaps...........

Realistically, a metre is a pain, & anything more pretty impractical.

Harvey

Do any N2 lasers have that big a gap? Maybe, but Ive not seen one.

you would only need a focal length of

I think what he means is that once the beam spreads to 25 mm.....

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with

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light

OK, the problems with just using air at standard pressure may be insurmountable for my application.

However, this page suggests homebuilt nitrogen lasers can be used for micromachining with the lasing gas at low pressure:

The Nitrogen Gas Laser. "This laser produces intense, short, pulses of UV radiation at 337.1nm and is useful for applications ranging from microcutting to pumping dye lasers. This is one of the easiest gas lasers to build 'from scratch' although the electrical discharge circuitry must be carefully designed."

The page suggests a vacuum pump to get the nitrogen down to 25 torr, about 3% of standard pressure, is simple and low cost. This company has prices for low cost UV lenses:

UV Optics - PCX.

They give a price for a 6mm diameter, 9 mm focal length UV lens as about $5.00. This is a Hong Kong company however.

Bob Clark

What about using a reflector?

Thomas