The Particle Lazer Cannon is the primary direct energy weapons system utilized by most of the Colonial Defense fleet after the year 1979 and later grows into the main standard ship defense within the Imperial Fleet by 1985. The cannon was used as a primary energy barrage weapon replacing the standard Turbo Lasers on Colonial ships and added to Earth defense ships (both planet and space based) during the 1st Earth/Cylon War.
System Configuration[]
The cannon was just that a large barreled and mounted turret system similar to Turbo laser defense turrets on standard battlestars that swiveled at 360 degrees.
However by the 2030s the system was evolved with a integration of later Cylon allied technology completely rebuilt remaking the system into a phased particle energy sphere that could super compress heated energy and fire it forward into a special focused long range burst of energy that made the weapon resemble more of a energy emitter then a actual rifle like cannon. However the term cannon stood as the term was familiar with most military divisions in directing the activation and firing of the system.
Basic System Mechanics[]
The Cannon operates on mainly 3 basic core components which are
- Lazer Generator
- Lazer Pump
- Particle or Plasma Accelerator
- Optical Cavity Resonator used to be the fourth component located in the cannons elongated Neo-Titanium Barrel which without this vital component the beam itself would not exist. However after the redesign into its current emitter form the resonator was rebuilt into a device now termed as a..
- Focus Resonator
1st is the Laser Generator which its main purpose is to hold the lazers primary particle energy charge which is kept in a semi fluidic Electro-Plasma state until it is ready to be fully converted/accelerated into its full ejected semi solid plasma state.
2nd are the 2 co-acting systems of the Lazer Pump and Accelerator as the primed electro-plasma is "Pumped" or rapid pulsed out of the generator housing and super accelerated into a ultra heated light based energy. However this sub system is used more for the systems 2nd mode of operation (detailed below).
The 3rd and final property is The optical cavity, a type of cavity resonator, the resonator contains a coherent beam of heated energy between reflective surfaces so that the visible light passes through the gain medium more than once before it is emitted from the output aperture (either through the cannon barrel or emitters platform) or the energy would lost to diffraction or absorption in open vacuum.
As light circulates through the cavity, passing through the gain medium, if the gain (amplification) in the medium is stronger than the resonator losses, the power of the circulating light can rise exponentially.
But each stimulated emission event returns a particle from its excited state to the ground state, reducing the capacity of the gain medium for further amplification. When this effect becomes strong, the gain is said to gain particle saturation.
The balance of pump power against gain saturation and cavity losses produces an equilibrium value of the laser power inside the cavity; this equilibrium determines the operating or firing point of the laser.
If the chosen pump power is too small, the gain is not sufficient to overcome the resonator losses, and the laser will emit only a very small plasma dispersion of lesser yield or impact. The minimum pump power needed to begin laser action is called the lasing threshold.
The expressed particle gain medium will amplify any photons passing through it, regardless of direction; but only the photons aligned with the resonator manage to pass more than once through the medium and so have significant amplification thus making the lasers beam the well known bright blue visible shade.
The beam in the cavity and the output beam of the laser, if they occur in free space rather than waveguides (as in similar to optical fiber focused lasers), are, at best, low order Gaussian Beams.
However this is rarely the case with powerful lasers. If the beam is not a low-order Gaussian shape. The transverse modes of the beam overall can be described concerning particle base and emission as a superposition of Hermite-Gaussian or Laguerre-Gaussian beams (for stable-cavity lasers).
Unstable laser resonators on the other hand, have been known to create surprisingly fractalized multi directional beams of what is considered collimated light, that is being parallel without beam divergence or Light/Particle/Energy dispersion as it is commonly known. However, a perfectly collimated beam cannot be created, due to vacuum based diffraction.
Although the laser phenomenon was discovered with the help of quantum physics as many of the beams energy creation source are sub atomic in nature it is not essentially more quantum mechanical or quantum vacuum based than other plasma or light sources.
For instance the operation of a free electron laser can be explained without reference to quantum mechanics.
Modes of operation[]
The output of a laser are utilized in the differing modes, these may be either a continuous constant-amplitude output (known as CW or continuous wave); or pulsed, by using the techniques of Q-switching, mode-locking, or gain-switching. In pulsed operation, much higher peak powers can be achieved. The pulsed mode is seen as more efficient and faster for starfighter weapon operations.
Some types of industrial lasers by comparison, such as dye lasers and vibronic solid-state lasers can produce either light or plasma over a broad range of wavelengths; this property makes them suitable for generating extremely short pulses of light, on the order of a few femtoseconds (10-15 s).
Continuous wave operation[]
In the continuous wave (CW) mode of operation, also termed as a "straight shot" the output of a laser is a relatively constant beam with respect to time. The population inversion required for lasing is continually maintained by a steady pump source.
Continuous wave operation is the most commonly used mode for capital and heavy defense ships as the mode creates a easily directional beam that could sweep across combat regions either destroying or disabling multiple targets or nearby objects at once with little physical targeting effort but more energy output through the ships generation grid.
Pulsed operation[]
In the pulsed mode of operation, the output of a laser varies with respect to time, typically taking the form of alternating 'on' and 'off' periods. In many applications one aims to deposit as much energy as possible at a given place in as short time as possible.
In industrial civilian use the process is known as laser ablation for example.
In both civilian and military examples a small volume of material at the surface of a work or enemy combatant surface might evaporate apart if it gets the energy required to heat it up far enough in very short time.
If, however, the same energy is spread over a longer time, the heat may have time to disperse into the bulk of the piece, and less material evaporates. This possibility is considered by either the ships or fighters tactical computer and insures that every firing meets maximum impact and superheating for maximum damage.
Pulsed operation is essential for colonial starfighter rapid firing upon multiple targets without wasting excess power from the crafts Laser generator core.
Q-switching[]
- Main article: Q-switching
In a Q-switched or Quantum switched laser, the population inversion (usually produced in the same way as CW operation) is allowed to build up by making the cavity conditions (the 'Q') unfavorable for lasing.
Then, when the pump energy stored in the laser medium is at the desired level, the 'Q' is adjusted (electro- or acousto-optically) to favorable conditions, releasing the pulse. This results in high peak powers as the average power of the laser (were it running in CW mode) is packed into more intense consentration a shorter time frame.
Q beams are utilized by "Sniper" or heavier weapons class ships, Q beams are usually utilized for impacting ships or craft with more dense or reenforced hulls typically (depending on the plasma base being fired).
Modelocking[]
- Main article: Modelocking
A modelocked laser emits extremely short pulses on the order of tens of picoseconds down to less than 10 femtoseconds. These pulses are the difference between semi auto and automatic fire.
The firing is typically separated by the time that a pulse takes to complete one round trip in the resonator cavity. Due to the Fourier limit (also known as energy-time Uncertainty principle), a pulse of such short temporal length has a spectrum which contains a wide range of wavelengths or variations of physical impact.
Because of this, the laser medium must have a broad enough gain profile to amplify them all. An example of a suitable material is titanium-doped, artificially grown sapphire known by Colonial pilots as a Sapphire laser.
The modelocked laser is a most versatile tool for researching processes happening at extremely fast time scales also known as femtosecond physics, femtosecond chemistry and ultrafast science
In civilian operation it is For maximizing the effect of nonlinear optics in optical materials (e.g. in second-harmonic generation, parametric down-conversion, optical parametric oscillators and the like), and in ablation applications. Again, because of the short timescales involved, these lasers can achieve extremely high powers.