DETERMINATION OF THE ENERGY OF A PULSED LASER BEAM BY TRANSFER OF THE PHOTON MOMENTUM TO A BALLISTIC TORSIONAL PENDULUM

Abstract

An instrument has been designed and constructed which is capable of measuring high energies of pulsed laser beams, without seriously interfering with their simultaneous use in an experiment. Transfer of the photon momentum of the beam to angular momentum of a doubly-reflecting ballistic torsional pendulum was the principle by which photon momentum effects were successfully measured. The instrument operates at 10 to the minus 5 power mm of Hg with a sensitivity of 2.55 plus or minus 0.04 cm/joule, and does not require damping of the initial oscillations before making a measurement. In addition to providing the capability of simultaneous energy measurement and use of a laser beam, the measurements made with this instrument appear to be more accurate than those made with a commercial calorimeter used for comparison.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 10, 1963
Accession Number
AD0420469

Entities

People

  • M. Stimler

Organizations

  • Naval Ordnance Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Angular Momentum
  • Calorimeters
  • Energy
  • Flash Lamps
  • Laser Beams
  • Lasers
  • Light Sources
  • Measurement
  • Measuring Instruments
  • Moment Of Inertia
  • Momentum
  • Momentum Transfer
  • Ordnance Laboratories
  • Pressure Measurement
  • Pulsed Lasers
  • Radiation
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Molecular Photonics/Laser Physics
  • Structural Dynamics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Directed Energy - Lasers