Overview

Included in degrees & certificates

• 119

Prerequisites

• PC2911
• PH3352

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will:

• Understand the basic concepts of directed energy weapons (in particular, high energy lasers), including major components, typical parameters, advantages and disadvantages, and potential military applications.
• Understand the basic physics of lasers, including atomic transitions, pumping, population inversion, stimulated emission, light amplification, and coherence.
• Perform simple calculations of transition rates and gain in a laser.
• Understand the factors that affect output power and efficiency of a laser weapon, and the input power and cooling requirements.
• Know the primary types of lasers, their advantages, and disadvantages.
• Understand the basic principles of fiber lasers, including total internal reflection, numerical aperture, optical modes, methods of pumping, effects that limit their output power, and beam combination techniques.
• Understand the effects of the atmosphere on the propagation of laser beams, including absorption, scattering, turbulence, and thermal blooming.
• Given laser and atmosphere parameters, estimate spot size and irradiance on a target at a given range and altitude using simple “scaling law” formulas and a beam propagation code developed in the course.
• Understand the basic principles of beam control, including beam director design, adaptive optics, targeting and tracking.
• Understand the basic principles of target lethality, including damage mechanisms, soft vs. hard kills, and the key factors that affect probability and time to kill.
• Given laser irradiance, spot size, and target material properties, estimate the required dwell time to melt through a given thickness of a target using simple thermodynamic formulas.