Phasers are the standard weapon of the Federation. Phasers are come in a variety of types ranging from the the small type I, which is the size of a modern cell phone to large ship mounted arrays with hundreds of emitters. Phasers are also one of the oddest weapons in Sci-Fi, they can stun, kill without a visible mark, set things on fire, cause rock to explode and vaporize without producing any vapour. This article will try to examine what we know and How phasers actualy work.

Note that only the type I and II names apear in canon, the type IIIs and IV are the comonly acepted fan names for these weapons.

The Type I phaser is the smallest and presumably the weakest of all phaser type. Based on diagrams of the Type I it has 11 different power setting. At the very least it can produce the "dynamiting" effect on a large boulder ("Hide And Q"[TNG1]):

That is a feat which would have taken at least 5.75MJ. The biggest advantage of a Type I phaser seems to be the easy concealablity.

The type II phaser is the standard side arm of the Federation and is used for most away missions. The unlike the design of the type I the type II phasers has under gone multiple changes in its time. In the TOS era the type II was just a type I clipped into a pistol grip. By the time the movies rolled around the type II had evolved into a one piece pistol design and finally by TNG the type II had evolved into a weapon with a large emitter with a slightly curved grip coming out behind it. The type II has significantly more power than a type I, with 16 power setting that range from light stun to the ability to destroy half a building ("Frame of Mind), while some people may disagree there is no reason to assume Riker's knowledge of phasers were affected. In fact inconsistencies between how technology worked and how it worked in his mind tipped him off to the illusion. In "Chain of Command"[TNG6] a type II vaporized at least 1m^3, which requires 15GJs. There is some debate over how that was accomplished, which will be dealt with latter in this article.

Type III

The type III is the rifle version of a phaser, with several variations. The most common federation rifle, which is simple called the type III (as opposed to the type IIIa/b/c etc.). The type III appears to be the SMG/Carbine of the Federation and first appeared in TNG but was primarily seen in DS9. The type III is a equipped with beam intensity, width, and power controls. It also has a flip up scope for aiming. In "The Adversary" Sisko covers two people by holding a type II in one hand and a type III in the other, which would seem to suggest that the type III is a very light weapon only weighing a few kilograms and the forward handle is primarily there aiming purposes.

In "Return to Grace" Kira while explaining both the Cardasian disruptor rifle and the Federation type III has this to say about the Federation rifle:

"Now this is an entirely different animal. It's Federation standard issue. A little less powerful, but with more options - sixteen beam settings, fully autonomous recharge, multiple target acquisition, gyrostablized - the works. It's more complicated, so it's not as good a field weapon. Too many things can go wrong. . . I think you should stick with the Cardassian rifle. It's smaller and easier to use. And if we get boarded, I don't want you to have to think too much about the weapon you're using."

Next is the Compresion phaser rifle:

Seen primarily on Voyager but also on the Equinox and carried by Star Fleet security in "Message in a Bottle". This weapon has been shown to fire both beams and pulses. Considering the compersion rifle is larger, bulkier, more ackward to hand and simply had no noticalbe fetures that made it superior to other phaser rifles one wonders why even make them? Obvously there must be some advantage to other rifles or the compression rifle would be used. My theory is that the compression rifle has more firepower or more likely a much larger power cell but that is just speculation with no canon evidence backing that up. So untill more evidence becomes available the advantages of the compersion rifle is limited to the relm of fan speculation.

Finally is the type IIIa/b/c phaser rifles:

These rifles appear to be the Star Fleet version of an assault rifle and have appeared in "First Contact" (the movie not the episode), "Insurrection" and "Nemesis" as well as in Voyager. There is little difference between the three variations of the design except for some minor cosmetic differences. Like the compression rifle the type IIIa/b/c has been seen to fire both pulses and beams. In "Nemesis" the type IIIc showed the ability to fire pulses much more rapidly than a/b version of the rifle. Whether the automatic setting is new or was just used onscreen for the first time is unknown but there is no reason to assume that the a/b versions can't also fire in automatic mode.

The type IV phaser canon is what is speculated to be mounted on the back of the Argo in "Nemesis" and is speculated to be the heavy machine gun of the Federation although we have never seen it onscreen. However judging by the size of the Argo canon it is not an unreasonable assumption.

Phaser arrays are the large strips of interconnected phasers mounted on Starships. The theory behind the arrays is that the arrays allow power from hundereds of emiters to be chanled to a single emiter and discharged with the full power of all the emitters combined. While there is no onscreen diolog that explains phasers arrays using that operating pricable the visual evidence of a glow starting at each end of the array and converging on a single emiter that then fires the phaser beam does seem to surport that.

Are phasers energy weapons or particle weapons? Well there isn't a clear answer. In "First Contact" Picard clearly says that phasers are particle weapons when he cautions against firing particle weapons (phasers) around the warp core but in "The Best of Both Worlds" Worf explains that each different phaser is set on a frequence in the upper EM band, which would seem to indicate that phasers are energy weapons. There is also the issue of firing nano-probes with phasers. So whats the answer, are they particle of energy weapons? Well I'd say they are a bit of both and fire a beam composed of both energy and particles. That theory would also explain how a phaser beam was transported in "Datalore"

Hand Weapons:

[The weapon commences firing] Data : "Energy flow is within normal parameters. From the prefire chamber to the emission aperture."

LaForge : "Rapid nadion pulse, right on target. Beam control assembly, safety interlock, both check out. Beam width intensity controls also responding correctly."

Data : "Energy cell useage remains constant at 1.05 megajoules per second. Curious... the efficiency reading on the discharge crystal is well above Starfleet specifications."

LaForge : "Yeah, by quite a bit. "

[The weapon ceases firing : total firing duration 34 seconds]

LaForge : "94.1% efficiency."

Data : "Our most efficient discharge crystal typically fires with 86.5% efficiency."

LaForge : "Hm. Lets take a closer look at the wave pattern on the emission beam. That might tell us why its losing so little energy."

[The weapon commences firing]

Data : Data : "Pulse frequency on the prefire chamber reads steady."

LaForge : "There. That's not right, the initial output spike is inverted."

Data : "That might suggest the weapon has been charged with a forced pulse. Well into the terahertz range."

[The weapon ceases firing : total firing duration 17 seconds]

LaForge : "Then it's definitely not Starfleet issue. And there can't be that many systems that use the terahertz speeds."

Data : "327 to our knowledge. We can probably achieve an exact match with a random computer search. It will take approximately 3 hours."

LaForge : "I believe we can narrow this down with a little common sense, Data. Who has the most to gain from a conflict between the Klingon Empire and the Federation?"

From that we can learn that the type III has 1.05MW of power. Now that is 0.25kg of TNT or 1 modern hand grenade per second. Obviously you don't want to get hit with that beam. That is the lower limit so what is the upper limit? Well the largest yield seen out of a hand phaser is 15.6GJ as seen in "Chain of Command". In that episode Worf with a level 16 phaser "vaporizes" at least one metric tonne of granite, a feat which requires 15.6GJ. And finally we have "Return to Grace" where Kira explains a Cardasian disruptor rifle she says:

"This is a standard issue, Cardassian phase-disruptor rifle. It has a four-point-seven megajoule power capacity... three millisecond recharge and two beam settings."

Ship Weapons:

Unfortunately there isn't as much useful data on Federation Ship board phasers so we have to use only a few episodes for information. In "Masks" the Enterprise vaporized a large comet with phasers at 10% power. Now to do that a total energy of 4.2Gigatons is needed. Since the event took several seconds the beam had a power of 1,173PW, therefore at full power a phaser has 11,730PW. It is worth noting that the event appeared to be a purly thermal event.

Direct Energy Transfer or Chain Reactions?

There is much debate about how phasers accomplish what they do. More specifically wether or not phasers use Direct Energy Transfer (DET) or a Nuclear Disruption Force (NDF). Whether or not phasers use NDF has a profound impact on firepower figures The criticisms of DET theory are good ones, after all its pretty hard to vaporize a person by throwing several megajoules at them but not harming a person standing next to the person who is getting vaporized. On the other hand phasers have shown the ability to produce thermal effects and other DET related effects. As for NDF which states that mater is converted to neutrinos by the nadion particles in a phaser beam is also full of holes. For example to turn a single kilogram of water into neutrinos 650TJ are required which is the equivalent of 155 Kilotons of TNT, which is many orders of magnitude higher than the highest known hand phaser output. Second canon Star Trek is quite clear that it is easy to detect neutrinos (Data even detected neutrinos from a cloaked ship with his tricorder) but not a single example of neutrinos being mentioned in connection with phasers. So how does a phaser work? To be frank I don't know. At this time there is just no good theory to explain the workings of phasers.

Links

Phasers.net

DITL

ST-v-SW.net

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