Talk:Chemical laser

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Physics This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, which collaborates on articles related to physics.
Stub This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the assessment scale.
??? This article has not yet received an importance rating within physics.

Help with this template This article has been rated but has no comments. If appropriate, please review the article and leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.
This article has been automatically assessed as Stub-Class by WikiProject Physics because it uses a stub template.
  • If you agree with the assessment, please remove {{Physics}}'s auto=yes parameter from this talk page.
  • If you disagree with the assessment, please change it by editing the class parameter of the {{Physics}} template, removing {{Physics}}'s auto=yes parameter from this talk page, and removing the stub template from the article.

Broadening the Industrial Base

The stub article seemed extremely centric to The Aerospace Corporation and its former parent company, TRW. I tried to balance the article a little bit with some mention of the work at General Electric, United Technologies and Rocketdyne. In fact, despite what is in the article, I recall Don Spencer and Jack Hinchen each giving credit to the other for the invention of the lab scale chemical laser. Several patents were awarded about that time regarding the chemical laser, including to United Aircraft, so I believe it is misleading to give the impression that The Aerospace Corporation was the sole inventor of the chemical laser. Another thing that bothers me is that the description of this laser is of supersonic flow, when in fact the cited references are for sub-sonic flow, and indeed the version built at the University of Alabama in Huntsville by Jim Harrington and Ben Ferguson, an advanced adaptation of the Hinchen and Spencer laser, was subsonic. A short-lived company, called HELIOS, tried to commercialize this technology and sold a number of low power (1-25 watts) chemical lasers during its existence. Also, no mention was made of the COIL laser, which is the chemical laser of most current interest. Rocket Laser Man 19:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Additional work to be done with article would be to includ a few diagrams and explain in more detail how a chemical laser works. Reference the the Handbook of Chemical lasers would be nice. Links to THEL, ABL and other militar program websites would be hepful, but because a lot of the work is classified at the collateral SECRET level, these military websites tend to be short lived.Rocket Laser Man 20:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What about Pimentel's work?

One blatant omission from this article is any mention of the work of George C. Pimentel, often mentioned by chemists as the inventor of the chemical laser. At the moment the earliest reference given is the 1969 paper by Spencer et al. "Continuous-Wave Chemical Laser". However Pimentel published earlier papers on both the HCl laser (JVV Kasper and GC Pimentel, Phys Rev Letters 14, 352 (1965)) and the HF laser (KL Kompa and GC Pimentel, J Chem Phys 47, 857 (1967)). Given Spencer's title, I assume that Pimentel's lasers were not continuous-wave, but they still should be mentioned as the first chemical lasers.

I would add the Pimentel references myself, but I don't know enough about the subject to correctly explain the relation between his work and the other work already mentioned. Could someone please integrate Pimentel's work into the article? Dirac66 (talk) 02:52, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think the Nov.28 edits by Rocket Laser Man have answered my request very well. Thanks. Dirac66 02:33, 2 December 2007 (UTC)