Some good discussion in the comments to the original post about both the physics of this and how to design the UI.

Originally shared by Winchell Chung

Most of the laser info in this page on my website is from Luke Campbell

He has the valuable insight that the secret to making a laser pistol do bullet levels of damage is pulsing the beam. (see link for details)

To penetrate soft tissue (i.e., an evil asteroid pirate), a good optimization is 1 kilojoule total energy in the laser bolt (i.e., what the weapon emits when you pull the trigger), divided into 1 joule pulses at 5 microsecond intervals, focused down to a spot size of a millimeter or less. This will bore a hole in the asteroid pirate about 30 centimeters long and 2 centimeters in diameter in about 0.005 seconds.

Then he caught my attention by mentioning the above pulse train was optimal for soft tissue, other values would be better suited for boring through metal or other materials.

So a professional laser pistol, instead of having the pulse values pre-set, would have some kind of controls to vary the pulse train. But what? And in the interests of verisimilitude, what are the scientific names of the variables to be written next to the controls?

So far I figure something like three controls:

[1] Total energy in the bolt (pulse train emitted with each trigger pull) in joules or something.

[2] Energy per pulse in the pulse train OR number of pulses in the bolt (energy per pulse is obviously total energy divided by number of pulses)

[3] Pulse delay interval

Does this sound like I’ve covered all the bases? What names to use? Later I’ll try and figure the user interface on the weapon, probably along the lines of a Phaser 1 (or even the iPhaser gag: https://www.martinhajek.com/apple-vs-star-trek-iphaser/ )

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sidearmenergy.php#blaster