A Laser Microcalorimeter

A new type of microcalorimeter as the laser power standard in Japan has been developed at the Electrotechnical Laboratory. This is a double calorimeter in which the laser power is measured by a dc substitution method using the thermopile unit, and simultaneous measurement is also made using the Peltier cooling-type calorimeter by dc substitution. The CW power of the gas laser (He-Ne) is controlled with high stability (±0.05 percent) by the automatic power control system using the Faraday rotation component. By this method and equipment, the "effective efficiency" of the standard thermopile unit is determined precisely. The errors in this microcalorimetric technique are investigated with the aid of heat flow analysis and auxiliary experiments. As a result, the absolute accuracy of the CW power measurement of laser beams (6328Å, 1.15μ) is evaluated with high accuracy better than 0.5 percent. The experiments have been successful at 6328Å and 1.15 μ, and this method is considered to be available at the region of infrared and far-infrared wavelength.