Development of Solar-pumped Lasers for Space Solar Power Station
- Paper number
IAC-05-C3.4-D2.8.09
- Author
Dr. Taku Saiki, Institute for Laser Technology, Japan
- Coauthor
Dr. Shinji Motokoshi, Institute for Laser Technology, Japan
- Year
2005
- Abstract
Research for a space solar power station (SSPS) has been performed to utilize solar energy in space. The availability of the solar energy in space is more than ten times higher than that on the ground. Laser beam is a promising alternative as beam transmitting medium compared with microwave, since it has many orders of magnitude shorter wavelength than microwave and therefore, diffraction is much smaller. Another advantage of using laser for power beaming is that solar power can be transformed into laser radiation directly with a high efficiency. Solar-pumped laser system can reduce the cost of SSPS compared with the microwave version by more than one order of magnitude, due to elimination of heavy metal parts such as solar cells, electrical wiring and microwave oscillators. Laser oscillations of disk-type Nd/Cr:YAG ceramics pumped by the arc-metal-halide lamp, which has similar spectrum to the solar light, had been observed experimentally for SSPS research. The obtained output power was 87 mW in the un-optimized condition where the input lamp power was 400W. The stored energy was improved to 0.6 J/cm3 by Cr doping.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-C3.4-D2.8.09.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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