Laser isotope separation by multiple photon absorption

摘要

Multiple photon absorption from an intense beam of infrared laser light may be used to induce selective chemical reactions in molecular species which result in isotope separation or enrichment. The molecular species must have a sufficient density of vibrational states in its vibrational manifold that, is the presence of sufficiently intense infrared laser light tuned to selectively excite only those molecules containing a particular isotope, multiple photon absorption can occur. By this technique, for example, intense CO2 laser light may be used to highly enrich 34S in natural SF6 and 11B in natural BCl3.