Larry Blasch wrote:
>
> There are a number of materials that emit laser energy when stimulated with
> optical wavelengths of light. A simple shutter system could be used to pulse
> the focused sunlight and the coherent laser beam could then be focused and
> directed more accurately than sunlight.
> You could do this with any suitable light source so you don't have to quit
> at night.
>
This is an intriguing idea when directly concentrated sunlight is
inadequate.
Unfortunately, to date, solar-pumped lasers have less than 1% conversion
efficiency. Some results from the University of Chicago are at
http://hep.uchicago.edu/solar/laser.html
Jim Mallos
Heliakon Solar Sintering Lab
jmallos@wizard.net
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 23:02:46 EEST