Hugo Costa

Research Areas

PhD Thesis: "Design of a multi-rod solar-pumped laser station"

Adviser: Professor Doutor Dawei Liang

Renewable solar-pumped laser offers the prospect of great economic and environmental benefits, contributing significantly to strong societal needs.

The design of a multi-rod renewable solar laser working station is proposed. The incoming solar rays will be focused by the 1 MW solar furnace of PROMES-CNRS (Procédés, Matériaux et Énergie Solaire-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). Multi laser heads will be placed evenly around the beam waist of the concentrator, each one for efficient pumping of a single laser rod. All the design parameters will be optimized in ZEMAX non-sequential ray-tracing software. Laser cavity analysis and design (LASCAD) software will then be used to optimize the laser resonator parameters. About 25 kW total solar laser power is expected, resulting in 2.5% solar-to-laser conversion efficiency, which may widen the application areas of solar-pumped lasers in renewable production.