Lasers: Space pew pew and a catalog

Lasers: Killer Light and Space pew pew

Lasers are probably the most widespread type of weapon in Science Fiction, be it the classic ray guns, Hans Solo’s iconic Blaster or Star Trek’s multi-functional Phasers, weaponizing the power of light was always a dream of humanity. Nowadays the laser as a weapon has started emerging in the field of Military defense weapons, and at the moment, multi-billion dollar contracts are entered for offensive lasers in the next generation of fighter jets.



Atmospheric Lasers

Often it is said that the atmosphere is a bad enviroment for laser weaponry, which is only partially true, as the advantage of having atmosphere is that most of cooling can we done by using the air of the atmosphere as a limitless heat sink. Lasers in space suffer from the lack of conducting medium, so they have to use heavy radiators which remove heat by emitting black body radiation.

Besides that, lasers in atmosphere are an losing game to some.



-Limited horizon

-Thermal blooming

-Dust and water vapour

-Atmospheric scattering (Short wavelenghts)



These are the limiting factors that negatively impact laser weaponry, their lethality can thereby vary with greatly range. But in most Hard SF scenarios the tech level is so high that laser as the standard armament can become feasible as their advantages start to overshadow their disadvantages.



Vacuum Lasers

In the vacuum of space, lasers don't have to deal with the pesky side-effects of atmosphere which cut their potential range down heavily. But without a conductive medium to be in, lasers are left alone with their arch nemesis, waste heat.



Most lasers are horrifically inefficient, producing 4-5x more waste heat than beam energy. Destroying heat radiators would thereby result in lasers dealing more damage to the ship firing them then to anyone else.



Operating temperature is a problematic topic with lasers, as at high temperatures thermal lensing and other effects massively decrease beam quality. So an laser with an operating temperature of 1200K might have an M²=1000, meaning their spot size will be 1000 times larger the diffraction-limit in terms of radius. The problem is very prominent in high output lasers, resulting in lasers in the dozens of kilowatts often having poor beam quality.



The solution was to use Fiber lasers, where thermal lensing is no problem, the large surface area of fiber optics also allows for efficient cooling. But fiber lasers already start to reach their limits. An single fiber optics will most likely never get past a few kilowatts of power, meaning that hundreds of fiber lasers have to shine at the same spot to achieve megawatt levels of power. This is called incoherent beam combining and results in degraded beam quality and is otherwise highly inefficient.



The next step in the evolution of laser weaponry is coherent beam combining, where a multiple up to hundreds to even thousand of beams can be combined into an single near diffraction-limited beam. This technology will most likely be first used to achieve a Megawatt-level Fiber laser, but the it has potential to give us the first efficient pure Diode lasers, with efficiencies of up to 80% being currently achieved at DARPA. These will be most likely be the candidate of choice when it comes to lasers weapons, be it in atmosphere or in space.



Portable Lasers

Some people aren't happy with just having a box in their vehicle of choice producing a deadly beam of light, no, they want awesome laser pistols and carbines to shoot some people at the speed of light with some flashy beams and pew pew sounds!



But those are usually much harder to achieve: it would require very compact and high power laser systems. Such a laser firearm would probably consist of a quantum dot/microdiode microship with either coherently combined beams or pumping a YAG crystal. The problems with having a laser pistol with high enough tech levels is not that they require quite a lot of electrical energy or that they have bad performance, no, it is justifying why you have laser firearms in the first place. A simple laser pistol would usually require a high-power microship capable of 10-100kW/kg of laser power, expensive and fragile optics and a volatile high energy battery/capacitor, making them quite fragile to shock and impacts but also requiring very high tech. A normal pistol on the contrary is rather simple, sturdy and cheap, requiring only gunpowder and some brass and lead. Both weapons most likely have comparable lethality at short range.



This is how we come to our next problem; range. Laser weaponry can very well reach the range of modern infantry weaponry, but the nature of laser beams is that they expand over distance. So a laser pistol could at point blank achieve .50BMG ammo penetration when pulsed but be less lethal than 9mm at 100m. When it comes to carbines the size limit of a lens is usually 6-8cm, a pistol will have a hard time to get past 2-3cm, meaning that the carbine not only has more firepower, but it can achieve 3-4x more range at the same power. A carbine might have effective ranges of up to 300-500m while a pistol only has 25-40m. We now see that range and lethality quickly rise with power, so why not go further? A crew-served weapon like the machine guns of WW2 would achieve much higher range and lethality than any carbine could. Such a crew-served weapon could alternatively be installed in a suit of Power armor, a combat robot or simply as a cybernetic body.



Vehicle-mounted Lasers

As previously established, bigger lasers are better lasers. But how much better? A lot.

Depending on vehicle, the roles vary alot, so here is a quick list for potential classes:



-Land: Equiped with sub-multi ton laser beam beam generators and lenses ranging from 10/20-50cm in diameter. These allow the beam to achieve high penetration values at distances up to 5-8km and remain small to reduce high probability of the focusing elements. These laser system have the advantage of variable power levels that allow them to be the equivalent of gatling gun up to a modern naval Railgun in penetration capacity.



-Air: Air-based laser system will greatly fluctuate in mass, often being in the sub-ton realm for small UAVs and a ton for fighter jet sized laser systems. Lasers are the ideal dogfighting weapon for jet fighters as the beams are not subject to wind and encouter very little resistance at high altitudes. The speed of a laser turret and its beams also makes it ideal for laser defense while the decreased lethality of long range HEL makes laser based Air-ground weapon hard. A fighter jet will also unlikely be able to damage anything more than lightly armored vehicles.



-Sea: Lasers are great point defense weaponry; a simple lightweight mirror can reflect the high energy beam with ease, and the low weight of the turret allows for high reaction speed and precision. This makes them the weapon of choice when a ship is attacked by AKV's, hypersonic missiles or high-speed drone swarms. Offensively lasers aren't very practical as their range is limited by the horizion.



-Under the sea: Laser submarines are an abstract concept at first but start to make a lot more sense when one thinks about it, they are often nuclear powered so they have energy to spare, are protected by the ocean and the ocean provides an unlimited heat sink for the laser to use. For more details go to Matterbeam’s wonderful Laser submarine post on his ToughSF blog

(Tough SF: Anti-Orbit Laser Submarines)



Laser types

Now it comes down to how do you design your laser? Don't worry, this isn't about hard equations but "How capable is my laser really?".



First, we have to establish what important qualities a laser really has.

It breaks down into four cateogories: Efficiency, Temperature, Beam, Mass.



Efficiency: Simple, how many watts input goes into beam output, it also dictates how much waste heat you get.

Temperature: You want higher temperatures so radiators can run as hot as you can make them, dictating how large your radiator has to be.

Beam: Wavelength and Beam quality dictate how long your effective range is.

Mass: How many watts of killer light do I get out per kilogram mass?



Flashlamp-pumped Laser

Flashlamp pumped lasers use a bright, intense source of light to pump a lasing medium, usually a crystal like Nd:YAG. Efficiency is poor but you get very high operating temperatures, potentially high specific power (power per kg), and decent beam quality.



Gas Dynamic Laser

Gas Dynamic Laser uses a Electrical discharge to produce molecular vibrational states in a special gas in which energetically lower vibrational states relax earlier than higher energy states, resulting in a population inversion that creates a coherent light beam.



Efficiency is decent, ranging up to 20-30%, operating temperatures are high, and very high specific power, beam quality heavily depends on operating temperature and gas mixture. Gas dynamic lasers make excellent PD weapons when you have the power to spare.



Fiber Laser

They are the more practical alternative to Solid State diode lasers at this moment. Fiber laser use rare earth metal doped fiber. Fiber lasers are generally immune to thermal lensing and can resist high temperatures while remaining able to deliver high quality beams. Efficiency is plenty with modern military models reaching 40% and it can achieve high specific power.



Semiconductor Laser

Semiconductor lasers use diodes/quantum dots to emit a coherent beam of light, they are used in most Solid State/slab Lasers. But one technique can give semiconductor lasers an big leap before Fiber Lasers: Coherent Beam combining. Phase conjugation mirrors and Spectral beam combining are the most used options, they give near perfect beam qualities and can reach efficiencies of up to 65-80%(!). Specific power is fairly high, but their operational temperature often lies within 30-50°C. To efficiently dissipate this power, advanced heat radiators like microchannel radiators are required.



Free Electron Laser

Free Electron lasers use relativistic electron beams to create a coherent beam of laser light. The Electron beam passes through alternating magnetic field (a wiggler) which forces the electrons to emit a photon in the same general direction.



An Energy recovery liniac (Electron beam recycler) can recycle 99.9% of the electron beam’s energy, at which point it comes down to accelerator efficiency. Liniacs, linear particle accelerators, can achieve very high efficiencies depending on how they are build. A realistic space-based FEL will use cryogenic RF cavities to accelerate its beam. This way, efficiencies approaching 100% are achieved. 95% Electrical-optical efficiency is to expected.



Temperature will at most be 130K, meaning heat pumps are required. Pumping 130 to600K results in a decrease of total efficiency to 80% using highly efficent superconducting heat pumps currently developed at NASA. Specific power may vary depending on tech level, the accelerators also require an minimum length for specific wavelenghts. 200 nm can be achieved via a 5m long liniac.



Free Electron lasers are also capable of changing frequency while in flight, resulting in n 200nm FEL also being capable of producing 1µm or any other wavelength, generally this isn't possible as the optics are required to have a specific wavelenght to properly work.



Depending on your tech levels, some of these lasers are out of the reach of practicality. Semiconductor Lasers and Free Electron Lasers are the pinnacle of laser technology in the near future, only being overshadowed by exotic laser concept like Pinch Discharge Antimatter Laser or Metric gravitational wave singularities. Fiber lasers are a good offensive solution for any low-tech hard sci-Fi and with Gas dynamic point defense lasers putting out enormous energies frying any missile or drone trying to come near you.



A list of completed laser design with capabilities and performance statistics will be found in the "Laser catalog".

The Laser catalog

Note: All these lasers are based on current day GaAs diode technology if not mentioned otherwise, used in an optimistic/futuristic laser weapon system, you can use the lasers in a modified form in your stories, if you want to do so.



Portable Laser Weapons (PLW)



Light Battle Laser

The Light Battle Laser is a lightweight high energy laser that is often carried by special infantry and elite units, the LBL also finds it's most often as an recon weapon for espionage and infiltration missions carried out by special forces.



Mass (unloaded) 6.5kg

Mass (loaded) 7.5kg

Magazine capacity: 100x

Firerate: 150RPM

Beam Energy: 5kJ

Lens diameter: 6cm

Wavelenght: 400nm

Effective Range (Armored): 300m

Effective Range (Unarmored): 2000m

Penetration in Steel (300m): 24.5mm



Heavy Battle Laser

The Heavy Battle Laser is the beefed up version of the LBL, having superior output, range and penetration that it's smaller brother. The HBL is often carried by snipers or used by powered units to attack Lightly armored vehicles and other powered enemy units.



Mass (unloaded) 12.5kg

Mass (loaded) 13.5kg

Magazine capacity: 40x

Firerate: 120RPM

Beam Energy: 12.5kJ

Lens diameter: 8cm

Wavelenght: 400nm

Effective Range (Armored): 700m

Effective Range (Unarmored): 3500m

Penetration in Steel (700m): 21.6mm



Shoulder-fired Laser Cannon

The Laser Cannon is an shoulder-fired heavy attack laser, it sports an much bigger lens and highly increased output to destroy armored targets at close range and killing infantry in the rapid-fire mode from great distances.



This weapon quickly replaced several missile launchers in their armies because this baby sports an 60-shots magazine and is immune to anti-HEAT armor.



Mass (unloaded): 22kg

Mass (loaded): 25kg

Magazine capacity: 60x

Firerate: 120RPM

Beam Energy: 25kJ

Lens diameter: 16cm

Wavelenght: 400nm

Effective Range (Armored): 1000m

Penetration in steel (1000m): 66.3mm



Assault/Rapid-firing weapon are not included as these lasers have variable output and firerates. The HBL for example can put out 2.5kJ shots at 600RPM, 5kJ at 300RPM and everything in between.



Light Auto-Laser

The Auto-Laser is an crew-served weapon that is deployed and put together by multiple military infantry units, the advantage of these weapons is that a small team can deploy an high powered laser turret with considerable range. They are the most likely laser weapons to be deployed in an military scenario as their increased performance overshadows that of most portable lasers.



Mass (unloaded): 22.5kg

Mass (loaded): 27.5kg

Magazine capacity: 100x

Firerate: 120RPM

Beam Energy: 25kJ

Lens diameter: 30cm

Wavelenght: 400nm

Effective Range (Armored): 1500m

Penetration in steel (1500m): 86.6mm

Penetration in Carbon Nanotubes (1500m): 23.3mm



Heavy Auto-Laser (HAL)

The Heavy auto Laser is the more powerful and massive version of the LAL, this heavy weapon is often carried out by squads equiped with powered exoskeletons. Groups of 4 to 6 are usually required to carry this weapon into battle.



Mass (unloaded): 110kg

Mass (loaded): 120kg

Magazine capacity: 50x

Firerate: 120RPM

Beam Energy: 100kJ

Lens diameter: 40cm

Effective Range (Armored): 2000m

Penetration in steel (2000m): 204mm

Penetration in Carbon Nanotubes (2000m): 69.1mm



The following penetration values will be in CNT, which is a placeholder for any advanced carbon based armor, be it Diamandoid or Nanotubes.



Penetration in steel is 4x higher than the penetration in nanomaterials. So you can compare your penetration values to modern kinetic weaponry.



The Auto-Laser can instead of being an crew-served be an integrated weapon system of powered armor or even autonomous combat robots, those robots can become mobile laser platforms that can deal massive damage to infantry and vehicles while also having considerable amount of stealth, hardness against fire and speed.



Land-based High Energy Lasers (L-HEL)

The qualities of lasers grow with laser size, as seen by the portable laser section an bigger lens and bigger beam generator will quickly start to add up to dangerous killer beams.



Mounting lasers on vehicles not only adds the advantage of an increased size limit but an constant power source emitting from the engine of the vehicle. The engine of the M1 Abrahams put out impressive 1.12MW of power, meaning an advanced laser system like discussed before could efficiently replace the main gun of the Abrahams with a laser. Capable of destroying enemy tanks, damage bunkers, efficiently kill infantry and destroying incomming missiles and destroy distant drones and jets.



Modular Assault Laser [Gen I] (MAL-L)

The Modular Assault Laser is an high energy laser developed by Rheinmetall for main battle tank and light tank alike. It provided an 40% mass reduction compared to it's old 120mm Smoothbore cannon while also keeping penetration the same and made it's light tank general purpose offense and defense systems. The system sports an phased locked microdiode chip which is Q-switched into one nanosecond long 400nm violet laser pulses. In later days the MAL has been implemented in many battle tanks and battle mechs.



Mass – Beam Generator: 1,000kg

Mass – Ultracapacitor: 1,080kg

Mass – Laser turret: 420kg

Magazine capacity: 108MJ – 36x shots. Constant 1MW input results in 43 shots of consecutive firing lasting 21.5 seconds and delivering 64.5MJ per charge (Regenerating).

Beam Energy: 1.5MJ

Efficiency: 50%

Specific power: 3kW/kg – 1.2kW/kg

Lens diameter: 50cm

Effective Range: 5000m

Penetration (5000m): CNT = 210mm, Armor Steel = 570mm



HI-Speed Point Defense Laser Weapon (HI-PDLW)

The HI-PDLW is an high speed point defense laser system build to destroy incomming missiles, HE rounds, KE rounds and microdrones. They are deployed 6-12 per vehicle massing at about 0.5-1 metric ton. The lasers are modified with an phase change flash cooling system liquid nitrogen.



Mass – Beam Generator: 40kg

Mass – Ultracapacitor: 5kg

Mass – High speed laser turret: 10kg

Magazine capacity: 5x

Beam Energy: 100kJ

Efficiency: 50%

Specific Power: 12.5kW/kg – 9.1kW/kg

Lens diameter: 10cm

Effective Range: 50m

Penetration: 64.3mm x 7.26mm (Penetration is traded for an wider channel)



Sea-based High Energy Laser (S-HEL)

Sea based lasers weapon have two significant advantages over land based ones, the sea is an excellent heat sink and the air is practically clean of air pollution. Laser submarines are also an great defense against orbital enemy spacecraft as the ocean protects it from being destroyed and detected in the first place. Their access to nuclear power also provides massive amounts of power.



Modular Assault Laser [Gen II] (MAL-S)

An optimized version of the land-based MAL, the waste heat removal system has been replaced by corrosion-proof heat exchanger thereby decreasing total mass and increasing specific power. The MAL-S also uses an optimized turret for high reaction time and precision laser strikes against incomming fire.



Mass – Beam Generator: 1,000kg

Mass – Ultracapacitor: 50kg

Mass – Laser turret: 500-3,000kg

Magazine capacity: External – Endless

Beam Energy: 2MJ

Efficiency: 50%

Specific Power: 4kW/kg / ~

Lens diameter: 50-120cm

Range: 5-20km



Anti-Orbital Submarine Attack Laser

(Tough SF: Anti-Orbit Laser Submarines)

toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/10/anti-orbit-laser-submarines.html

Air-based High Energy Laser (A-HEL)

The famous example of an air-based laser weapon is the YAL-1, deploying an multi-MW COIL laser designed to shoot down ICBM while in their boosting phase. The Pentagon plans to have lasers as an common weapon on the sixth-Generation of jet fighters because they have many advantages over kinetics and missiles. The fact that jet fighters usually don't deploy much of an lasers makes lasers ideal to destroy enemy jets with ease, meanwhile also missiles and drones can be shoot down with such an weapon.



Modular Assault Laser [Gen III] (MAL-A1)

The MAL-A not only sports increased specific power contrary to older models but also is somewhat lighter than earlier models. It has been increasingly popular in 7th Gen. Jet fighters of earths military forces, downscaled versions became the standard armament of UAV's.



Mass – Beam Generator: 800kg

Mass – Ultracapacitor: 300kg

Mass – Laser turret: 100kg

Magazine capacity: 30MJ / 10x shots (Regenerating)

Beam Energy: 1.5MJ

Efficiency: 50%

Specific Power: 3.75kW/kg – 2.5kW/kg

Lens diameter: 35cm

Range: 20-50km



Modular Assault Laser [Gen III] (MAL-A2)

It is the downscaled version of MAL-A1 designed for UAV's like the Predator or Reaper drones.



Mass – Beam Generator: 300kg

Mass – Ultracapacitor: 45kg

Mass – Laser turret: 55kg

Magazine capacity: 4.5MJ / 5x shots (Reg.)

Beam Energy: 0.45MJ

Efficiency: 50%

Specific Power: 3kW/kg / 2.25kW/kg

Lens diameter: 20cm

Range: 5-15km



Modular Assault Laser [Gen III] (MAL-A3)

An upscaled variant of the MAL-A1, it was designed for Anti-ICBM, Satellite and long range engagements, being mounted on the AC-130, 747 and most commonly in High Altitude/Stealth Bomber.



Mass – Beam Generator: 6000kg

Mass – Ultracapacitor: 900kg

Mass – Laser turret: 900-3000kg

Magazine capacity: 90MJ / 3x shots (Reg.)

Beam Energy: 15MJ

Efficiency: 50%

Lens diameter: 50-120cm

Range: 25-100km



Vacuum-based High Energy Laser (V-HEL)

Space, humanities final frontier, and the lasers home. No pesky atmosphere blooming and scattering your beam nor an horizon limiting for range. Lasers can employ all their strenghts in space, but on the downside you now have an new evil, waste heat. Luckily with some ingenuity and engineering you can create apropiate radiators to remove the waste heat for you.



Tactical Laser star (TLS)

(Note: This laser utlizes quantum dot beam emitters, they are an advanced form of microscopic semiconductor diodes.)

Tactical Laser Stars are part of the federations main armament, the entire sub-cap drone masses only 118.2 tons and having 181.66km/s while accelerating at 53 milli-gees. Their heavy QD-Laser beam is relayed by twenty mirror drones allowing for multi light-second ranges to be achieved. It is an favourite of many captains and generals because of their cost-effectiveness and reliability of destroying their target.



Mass – Beam Generator: 40,000kg

Mass – Ultracapacitor: 3,750kg

Mass – Radiator: 5,000kg

Mass – Mirror: 7,250kg

Mass – Total: 56,000kg

Specific Power: 12.5kg/kW / 8.93kW/kg

Beam Energy: 250MJ (120RPM)

Efficiency: 65%

Wavelenght: 200nm

Beam Quality: 1.01

Temperature: 350K

Mirror diameter: 50m

Range: 50Mm-750Mm



Modular Free Electron Laser (MFEL)

Free electron lasers use an beam of free electron to produce an coherent laser beam, the beam is produced by letting the electron beam fly through alternating magnetic fields (wiggler). Efficiency get up to near 100% using a energy recovery liniac and superconductors, this efficiency combined with creating virtually any frequency with adequate accelerator length makes free electron lasers an worthy alternative to QD-Lasers in the visible light range.



Mass – Beam Generator: 50,000kg

Mass – Heat pumps: 1,250kg

Mass – Radiator: 1,175kg

Mass – Mirror: 7,250kg

Mass – Total: 59,675kg

Specific Power: 10kW/kg – 8.38kW/kg

Beam Power: 500MW

Efficiency: 95-86%

Wavelength: 200nm

Beam Quality: 1

Temperature: 400K

Mirror diameter: 50m

Range: 50Mm – ... (Mirror drones)



X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL)

The ability of free electron lasers to generate any frequency limits them to their optical focusing elements, an simple parabolic aluminium mirror can focus 200nm light reliably. For 100-10nm grazing incidence mirrors are required, they are heavy, expensive and hard to reliably use. But going even down the electromagnetic wave ladder we get to hard x-ray with wavelength in the tens of Angström (Angström = 0.1nm). Luckily they have an method of reliable focusing, x-ray diffraction crystals. Those allow for 1nm wavelengths to be focused by an strained crystal up to light minute ranges. The catch? You'll need an accelerator 500 meter in length to produce high enough electron energies to produce those wavelengths. Limiting them to dreadnaughts and space fortresses, alternatively wake-field accelerators can be used, but they require optical pumping and have horrible efficiency in general. The XFEL still is the primary weapon of the federations heavy warships, giving them light minute ranges, which allows for WW2 like combat thanks to the enormous delay between firing and hitting. At 5 light minutes; if you shoot at your target it will hit where the ship was 10 minutes ago, as the light emitted from the spacecraft has travelled five minutes to you and your took five minutes to arrive at the spot. The federations answer were super-algorithms, the size of the XFELs limited them to multi-megaton class ships which can afford having hundred tons of computing equipment to use the power hungry algorithms to reliably predict your target's position.



Mass - Beam Generator: 500,000t

Mass – Heat Pumps: 2,500t

Mass – Radiator: 2,350t

Mass – Mirror: 350t

Mass – Total: 505,200t

Specific Power: 2kW/kg – 1.98kW/kg

Beam Power: 1TW / 1,000GW

Efficiency: 95-86%

Wavelenght: 1nm

Beam Quality: 1

Temperature: 400K

Mirror diameter: 20m

Range: 90Gm / 90,000Mm / 5 light-minutes



Bomb-pumped X-ray Laser

The concept of using nuclear weapons to pump laser is an old one, first being proposed for the Star Wars initiative under the name Excalibur, it was meant to be an nuclear bomb with thousands of lasing rods mounted on it, each emitting an intense laser pulse of x-rays to ICBMs in their boosting phase.



Engulfing an nuclear device can be used to produce an intense black body x-ray flash in the 1 nanometer spectrum, 5m long and 60 micron wide rods bundles made out of zink can convert 2.5% of an bombs energy into an directional x-ray blast with an divergance of 20 microns. Divergance is determined by geometry and diffraction of the rods. Long and thin rods produce very low divergeance simply from geometry, but on the flip side; the thinner the rod the faster the beam will expand via diffraction, this puts gives an optimal beam divergeance.



Yield: 1MT / 4.184 PJ

Mass – Nuclear Device: 1,300kg

Mass – Gain medium: 5,600kg

Gain medium geometry: 5m x 0.06mm

Efficiency (Nuclear-optical) 2.5%

Beam Energy: 104.6 TJ

Pulse width: 1 nanosecond

Divergeance: 20 micron

Range: 1,000km x 20m spot size - 333GJ/m²



Antimatter catalyzed XRASER (AC-XRASER)

The energy of an nuclear explosion can be used to produce an x-ray beam in an gain medium made out of zinc that emits an coherrent near diffraction-limited beam of 1nm hard x-rays. The same 1nm x-rays used as in the XFEL with it's crystal diffraction lens. Naturally this evolved into small compact nuclear devices equiped with crystal diffraction lenses with ranges paralleling that of XFELs and the lethality of an Terawatt laser in an small package.



Yield: 10MT / 41.84 PJ

Mass – Nuclear Device: 1,500kg

Mass – Gain medium: 60,000kg

Mass – Crystal diffraction lens: 25,000kg

Gain medium geometry: 5m x 0.06mm

Lens diameter: 10m

Wavelenght: 10 Angström / 1nm

Efficiency: 2.5%

Beam Energy: 1.046 PJ

Pulse width: 1 nanosecond

Range: 10 light minute / 180Gm x 44m spot size – 687.5 GJ/m2

www.nlight.net/nlight-files/file/technical_papers/PW05_crump_5711-3_Photonics05.pdf

With the help of Matterbeam I extrapolated power to weight ratio for modern high efficiency laser diodes.



www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

The go to place when it comes to hard SF facts and statistics.



www.toughsf.blogspot.com

Matterbeam's personal blog.



panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeathRay/DeathRay.html

A lot of important informations about laser optics and the Material Response calculator that was used to calculate penetration values of the lasers.



Special thanks to Matterbeam for providing information and editing certain parts, also a special thanks to Sevoris for providing ideas for certain laser weapons through his "Exoxen" setting.