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Steering Lightning With Lasers






Its very interesting !
I will try to power my 2W 445nm beast
during a thunderstorm :D
I am a bit scared actually :p

Jim
 
I would think you would need a huge laser to create a column of ionized gas big enough to pull a lightening bold.

I think the tests are cool, but I dont think it would be practical in a real world application.

Would be nice to see video of the experiment, but I cant find any.
 
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Well, visible light doesn't ionize air, so it wouldn't do anything anyway.

It has to be a UV or lower laser to ionize air. Anything above UV doesn't do anything.

I think it's around 300 nm and lower that ionization starts to happen... Roughly the same wavelength as germicidal lamps and whatnot. That's why you can sometimes smell ozone when running germicidal tubes.
 
Visible light really doesnt have anything to do with it.

I've read high power IR ionizes air also, not just UV. But I could be wrong.
 
hmm lightning is static energy not EM, but we see EM from it, to make a ionizing channel of air would not you have to have a real monster like a gamma ray laser as its beam is considered ionizing radiation, or triple point IE has to do with E total from the W of the beam and the total energy of its bandwith, and the band gap of the crystal lattice of matter the beam collides with? meaning yes you could ionize air with say visible light but it would take a crap ton of energy in the beam to do it.
 
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Solid fuel rockets trailing wire are usually used for lightning research ..
 
yes I have seen it, also the static field produced by a helicopter rotor ionizes air, and the ions give off UV EM and sometimes with denser matter than air, IE dust the EM is blue to UV and becomes visible with the eyes, the common theory that the blades are sparking on dust is hogwash, the rotor blades are non sparking metal and in some case not even made from metal. Pointing to my triple point idea. just in reverse. :P I am confusing myself now so I will quit lol
 
I think what I was saying is that err um ideally the shorter wavelength the better but with higher power you could use any laser, but the power you need may huge. A huge dump of any kind of energy can ionize lots of air another words. So for the other post kinda got lost somewhere, ended making me look insane :P
 
Here is relevant page on wiki: Electrolaser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And here is some interesting article linked in it: Laser-triggered lightning discharge

Conclusion from the article above:

Through the simulation work and within the limits of the model presented above, it is concluded that UV (with a central wavelength of 248 nm) laser pulses with pulse width of 200 ps, peak power 50 MW and a beam size of 100 µm are seen as the optimal tool to initiate outdoor lightning. The input energy requirement for such a laser system is 12.5 mJ.

My words again .. problem is I don't know about such laser. Are there solid state UVs ? Or anything which would work well in pulse mode (by using Q-switch I guess) ?
 
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I know you can get pulsed laser, at 213nm that should fit the rest of the criteria for your laser. I still don't quit see why an x-ray laser would not be better at ionizing, but then again I am still learning. and also I may add to make a I have ever heard of anyone getting it to work out yet, I think personally this will be out of reach for a bit, wiki said "possibly a diode laser" ya im sure a diode is going to make a plasma channel to the target in the next 10 years. I am sure it works in a gas filled tube but open air? I don't think 50 MW pulse laser is making its way to a handheld anytime soon at least :P
 
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not common as far as I know I just know that wavelength has more energy in it, and all this is just theory anyway, I have never seen anyone pull it off, researchers can talk but a picture is worth a thousand words, I know we can do x-ray lasers though I am not to familiar with it.
 
I was struck by lighting when I was 16, and was unconscious for about 20 minutes. I'll let you good folks play with the lightning as I huddle inside where it's safe! That one bolt got my attention for life! :-)
 
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