The Novel HighEnergy Laser Weapons and Optical Metrology Test Technology for HighEnergy Laser

The novel highenergy laser weapons have been studies and developed for more than forty years. The first generation highenergy laser weapons mainly employ chemical CW lasers with excellent engineering scaling and good beam quailty. The second generation highenergy laser weapons mainly use solidstate lasers with shorter wavelength and different working mode to reach the lethal and damage effect with minimal output energy. With the development and deployment of highenergy laser weapon, it is very necessary for optical metrology and measurement of the highenergy laser weapon, it is very necessary for optical metrology and measurement of the highenergy laser parameters (such as energy/power, laser waveform, beam quality, near field and field intensity distributions, beam pointing stability, spectrum and polarization feature) to be done. In this paper, the present state and development trend for the novel highenergy laser weapons are reviewed. It is a great challenge for optical metrology test of the highenergy laser to meet the requirement of the research and development of the highenergy laser to meet the requirement of the research and development of highenergy laser weapon systems.