Abstract

Copper vapor lasers (CVL) have been used as image-brightness amplifier in various optical projection systems since 20 years ago [1,2], However, the copper halide laser is more compact and has a comparatively low operating temperature. Meanwhile, we can also benefit from the fact that the active medium is homogeneous, the single-pass gain is sufficiently high, it can be operated at high repetition frequencies, and the output wavelengths are at the visible part of the spectrum [3], A sealed-off CuBr vapor laser was used as an image- brightness amplifier in high-speed photography and photomicrography [4]. On the other hand, laser range-gating was proposed in the 60’s where the delay of the gated pulse of the detector relative to the laser pulse was scanned to obtain the signal of the objects hidden behind the diffused environment [5], Obviously, the combination of the above two techniques would bring us more advantages. In the present paper, we demonstrate a novel CuBr vapor laser based remote gated image-brightness amplifying system which suited to view objects hidden behind diffused environment.

© 1996 Optical Society of America