A delta wing nozzle assembly for use within a supersonic chemical laser having a plurality of delta wing-shaped elements which substantially increases the mixing rate of the active reactive gaseous ingredients injected into the resonant cavity of the laser. Each of the plurality of delta wing-shaped elements being of a triangular configuration in which the shape thereof is such that the flow of the gaseous ingredients thereover, normal to the leading edge of the triangular-shaped element, is subsonic. This increased mixing rate substantially increases the output power of the laser.

A transverse flow gas transport laser including a closed loop of ducting through which a gaseous lasing medium can be circulated so as to pass continuously through a lasing region of the ducting in which it can be excited into lasing activity, in which there is included means for extracting a portion of the gaseous lasing medium from a region of the ducting other than the lasing region, comprising the said portion of the lasing medium and injecting it back into the remainder of the lasing medium thereby to induce flow of the gaseous medium through the lasing region of the ducting.

A chemical laser cavity fuel injection system is provided in which a conving-diverging nozzle for injecting an oxidizer has manifolds mounted at opposite sides and at the exit plane of the converging-diverging nozzle with fuel injection wedges connected to the manifolds and having ports therein for injecting fuel therethrough with each wedge terminating at one side of the nozzle before crossing the boundary layer region at this side of the converging-diverging nozzle to provide secondary wedges that are staggered to provide for more uniform mixing and therefore less degrading in the laser output power over prior art arrangements.

A chemically driven HF overtone laser operates from either thermal or electrical dissociation of a molecular gas containing fluorine. Significant output powers are produced from .DELTA.v=2 vibrational transitions. Free F atoms produced by both thermal and electrical dissociation techniques are reacted with a molecular gas containing hydrogen to produce excited HF molecules. Overtone transitions, i.e., .DELTA.v=2 transitions are preferentially depleted by both optical enhancement and preinjection techniques to produce overtone laser transitions.

The invention herein is directed to a dual-chamber combustion laser assembly having lighter weight (per unit flow area), a more compact, flexible configuration for packaging in spacecraft, aircraft, or ground mobile vehicles, higher mass efficiency from lower heat loss and proven power extraction efficiency of linear lasers, superior output beam quality by incremental compensation of gain medium optical path disturbances and by reduction in time-dependent variations in structural and gain medium characteristics, lower cost and shorter fabrication time for modular dual flow laser and linear optics, more efficient pressure recovery with side-wall isolation nozzles and compact diffuser configurations, and increased small signal gains for more efficient extraction of overtone power.