4. Applications

As soon as the laser was created, the prospect of its industrial impact quickly became apparent. After almost 30 years of development, the laser has found many industrial applications, such as cutting, drilling, welding and surface treatments. Currently, the laser is the only heat source available, enabling very high power densities in air (of the order of 10 ⁸ W/cm ² ). As a result, laser beam processes and those using electron beams, which are less recent, are often better than all other methods when large temperature gradients are required.

Since a high energy density FHDE beam can be focused by optical elements into a spot of variable diameter, different power densities can be achieved. Another important parameter is the beam-material interaction time. By varying these...