High Power/Energy Lasers in Our Life

The book High Power Lasers in Our Life is devoted to the blessed memory of the author's teacher and colleague, A.M. Prokhorov- Nobel Prize winner and the founder of the General Physics Institute RAS. The general idea of this book is to discuss high-power, high-frequency, pulse-periodic laser systems, suggested and developed together with A.M. Prokhorov. In the near future, they will find a lot of new and very effective applications in the area of energy transfer systems, ecology, machinery, space engineering, engineering of hard ice in the Arctic, acceleration of charged particles produced by high energy lasers and many others. A laser-plasma generator of charged ions produces a large number of heavy ions in the regime of short periodic pulses, which is of interest for ion accelerators operating in the pulse-periodic regime as well as a topic of high interest. This book has considered in detail a new approach to the problem of a laser jet engine creation, which is based on the resonance merging of shock waves generated by an optical pulsating discharge, produced by such a laser. To obtain an optical pulsating discharge, which is the source of EMI (a wide spectrum of light and sound), we suggested the usage of high-power pulse-periodic laser radiation, which can be generated by a big aperture of carbon dioxide, chemical and mono-module disk type solid-state laser systems with LD pumping. Future developments of disk laser technology as most effective and scalable to the level of hundreds of kW are under consideration in this book as well. A laser-plasma based generator of highly charged ions produces a large number of particles in the regime of short periodic pulses, which is of interest for ion accelerators operating in the pulse-periodic regime as well as a topic of high interest. The source of this type is also promising for effective use in the field of heavy-ion fusion, brittle materials figure cutting, oil films elimination from water surfaces and so on. This book will be of great interest for many different communities: students, scientists, teachers, and intellectually advanced people. The future of high power, high repetition rate lasers is very bright!