Coating-less laser

In this project, we will develop a compact, ultra-stable, yet highly-reliable laser that does not have any thin-film optical coatings, whose damage is the most common failure mechanism in high power lasers. The proposed coating-less laser concept would revolutionize the traditional common understanding of laser structure, and would benefit variety of future NASA missions and instruments across multiple lines of businesses. This project will focus on laboratory demonstration of this innovative concept.

The new laser concept minimizes major risk of catastrophic damage, and development time, and potentially breaks the limit of output peak power of traditional lasers, while improving the performance. The proposed effort will pave the way for high-power, reliable space lasers, which do not have limitations set by the traditional optical coatings. We believe this technology could be licensed to commercial vendors and other government agencies, since high-power damage-free laser is in high demand. This technology will benefit all line of businesses of NASA, as well as advanced concepts beyond them, such as power beaming and laser propulsion.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 4) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.