Chemical Lasers

A chemical laser is usually defined as one in which the population inversion is “directly” produced by a chemical reaction. According to this definition, the gas-dynamic CO₂ laser should not be regarded as a chemical laser even though the upper state population arises ultimately from a combustion reaction (e.g., combustion of CO with O₂ ). Chemical lasers usually involve a chemical reaction between gaseous elements, and often involve either an associative or a dissociative exothermal chemical reaction.

Chemical lasers are interesting for two main reasons: (1) They provide an interesting example of direct conversion of chemical energy into electromagnetic energy. (2) They are potentially able to provide either large output power (in CW operation) or large output energy ( in pulsed operation). This is because the amount of energy available in an exothermal chemical reaction is usually quite large.

Chemical lasers of the HF type can give large output powers (or energies) with good chemical efficiency. The most important area of these lasers seems to be for high-power military applications.