Photonics

Biography

Biography: Victor V Apollonov

Abstract

At present, we consider as most energetic and promising for high repetition rate pulse – periodic (P-P) laser applications carbon dioxide laser, chemical laser and solid-state laser. In the future, high-power high-frequency P-P lasers will find applications in the field of ecology of space. Besides, they will be used to transmit power over long distances, to obtain high-power plasma radiation in the range of ten to hundreds of Angstroms, to realize arbitrary geometry of the breakdown in a three-dimensional space, to produce ultrasound, electromagnetic fields etc. A new class of rocket engines – a laser jet engine (LJE) – objectively belongs to the most promising rocket engines of the foreseeable future. The LJE is substantially more cost-effective than conventional chemical fuel engines. At the initial stage of the flight, the LJE employs atmospheric air as a working medium and in outer space use is made of a small space-borne gas supply or an easily sublimated substance. In this case, the specific costs of the cargo launching to outer space may be reduced down to 150–300 USD/kg. The LJE-based solution of a series of very interesting and important problems is predicted, in particular designing of a space interceptor that would destroy debris and other dangerous space objects, such as asteroids, meteors, etc.; launching of macro-objects with a very high acceleration that is orders of magnitude greater than it can be done by existing technology; realization of super-long orbital-scale conducting channels for addressing the global challenges of ecology and energy transfer; laser-plasma generator of multiply charged ions produces a large number of heavy ions in the regime of short P-P pulses, which is of interest for ion accelerators operating in the P-P regime and many other applications of high energy P-P lasers.