United Technologies Corporation

John S Foley

Paul R Blaszuk

Sallie S Townsend

Philip R Cunningham

Jeffrey P Carstens

A laser with an unstable resonator configuration is described with a second, lower power auxiliary laser to provide a feedback beam to pulse high power CW lasers without exceeding the power handling capability limitation of currently available modulators. The present laser relies on adjoint mode feedback provided by the auxiliary laser to accomplish pulsed operation with a modulator in the low power feedback beam path. Higher power output beams can be generated with multiple stages of auxiliary laser providing adjoint mode feedback, thereby reducing incident power on modulation devices while providing adequate adjoint beam power to effectively pulse the high power laser. In certain embodiments a single gain generator is used to drive the main and auxiliary lasers.

High power laser having staged laser adjoint pulsed feedback

A laser pipe welding system for welding 360.degree. around a pipe includes a pair of focusing heads each welding half the pipe circumference, a seam tracker to keep the focal spot on the seam to compensate for axial and radial variations, an active beam alignment system for real-time compensation of angular misalignment, and both passive and active-feedback beam transport systems that flexibly follow the focus head.

Growing community of inventors

Manchester, CT, United States of America

John S Foley