INTRODUCTION

The word laser started as an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation"; in modern usage "light" broadly denotes electromagnetic radiation of any frequency, not only visible light, hence infrared laser, ultraviolet laser, X-ray laser, and so on. Because the microwave predecessor of the laser, the maser, was developed first, devices of this sort operating at microwave and radio frequencies are referred to as "masers" rather than "microwave lasers" or "radio lasers". In the early technical literature, especially at Bell Telephone Laboratories, the laser was called an optical maser; this term is now obsolete. A laser which produces light by itself is technically an optical oscillator rather than an optical amplifier as suggested by the acronym. It has been humorously noted that the acronym LOSER, for "light oscillation by stimulated emission of radiation," would have been more correct. With the widespread use of the original acronym as a common noun, actual optical amplifiers have come to be referred to as "laser amplifiers", notwithstanding the apparent redundancy in that designation A laser is a device that emits light (electromagnetic radiation) through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The emitted laser light is notable for its high degree of spatial and temporal coherence, unattainable using other technologies. Spatial coherence typically is expressed through the output being a narrow beam which is diffraction-limited, often a so-called "pencil beam." Laser beams can be focused to very tiny spots, achieving a very high irradiance. Or they can be launched into a beam of very low divergence in order to concentrate their power at a large distance. Temporal (or longitudinal) coherence implies a polarized wave at a single frequency whose phase is correlated over a relatively large distance (the coherence length) along the beam. beam produced by a thermal or other incoherent light source has an instantaneous amplitude and phase which vary randomly with respect to time and position, and thus a very short coherence length. Most so-called "single wavelength" lasers actually produce radiation in several modes having slightly different frequencies (wavelengths), often not in a single polarization. And although

temporal coherence implies monochromaticity, there are even lasers that emit a broad spectrum of light, or emit different wavelengths of light simultaneously. There are some lasers which are not single spatial mode and consequently their light beams diverge more than required by the diffraction limit. However all such devices are classified as "lasers" based on their method of producing that light: stimulated emission. Lasers are employed in applications where light of the required spatial or temporal coherence could not be produced using simpler technologies. The back-formed verb to lase is frequently used in the field, meaning "to produce laser light,"[6] especially in reference to the gain medium of a laser; when a laser is operating it is said to be "lasing." Further use of the words laser and maser in an extended sense, not referring to laser technology or devices, can be seen in usages such as astrophysical maser and atom laser.

Design

Principal components: 1. Gain medium 2. Laser pumping energy 3. High reflector 4. Output coupler 5. Laser beam A laser consists of a gain medium inside a highly reflective optical cavity, as well as a means to supply energy to the gain medium. The gain medium is a material with properties that allow it to amplify light by stimulated emission. In its simplest form, a cavity consists of two mirrors arranged such that light bounces back and forth, each time passing through the gain medium. Typically one of the two mirrors, the output coupler, is partially transparent. The output laser beam is emitted through this mirror.

Light of a specific wavelength that passes through the gain medium is amplified (increases in power); the surrounding mirrors ensure that most of the light makes many passes through the gain medium, being amplified repeatedly. Part of the light that is between the mirrors (that is, within the cavity) passes through the partially transparent mirror and escapes as a beam of light. The process of supplying the energy required for the amplification is called pumping. The energy is typically supplied as an electrical current or as light at a different wavelength. Such light may be provided by a flash lamp or perhaps another laser. Most practical lasers contain additional elements that affect properties such as the wavelength of the emitted light and the shape of the beam.

HISTORY
In 1917, Albert Einstein established the theoretic foundations for the laser and the maser in the paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation); via a rederivation of Max Plancks law of radiation, conceptually based upon probability coefficients (Einstein coefficients) for the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation; in 1928, Rudolf W. Ladenburg confirmed the existences of the phenomena of stimulated emission and negative absorption; in 1939, Valentin A. Fabrikant predicted the use of stimulated emission to amplify short waves; in 1947, Willis E. Lamb and R. C. Retherford found apparent stimulated emission in hydrogen spectra and effected the first demonstration of stimulated emission; in 1950, Alfred Kastler (Nobel Prize for Physics 1966) proposed the method of optical pumping, experimentally confirmed, two years later, by Brossel, Kastler, and Winter.

Laser
In 1957, Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow, then at Bell Labs, began a serious study of the infrared laser. As ideas developed, they abandoned infrared radiation to instead concentrate upon visible light. The concept originally was called an "optical maser". In 1958, Bell Labs filed a patent application for their proposed optical maser; and Schawlow and Townes submitted a manuscript of their theoretical calculations to the Physical Review, published that year in Volume 112, Issue No. 6. Simultaneously, at Columbia University, graduate student Gordon Gould was working on a doctoral thesis about the energy levels of excited thallium. When Gould and Townes met, they spoke of radiation emission, as a general subject; afterwards, in November 1957, Gould noted his ideas for a laser, including using an open resonator (later an essential laser-device component). Moreover, in 1958, Prokhorov independently proposed using an open resonator, the first published appearance (the USSR) of this idea. Elsewhere, in the U.S., Schawlow and Townes had agreed to an open-resonator laser design apparently unaware of Prokhorovs publications and Goulds unpublished laser work. At a conference in 1959, Gordon Gould published the term LASER in the paper The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.[1][5] Goulds linguistic intention was using the -aser word particle as a suffix to accurately denote the spectrum of the

light emitted by the LASER device; thus x-rays: xaser, ultraviolet: uvaser, et cetera; none established itself as a discrete term, although raser was briefly popular for denoting radiofrequency-emitting devices. Goulds notes included possible applications for a laser, such as spectrometry, interferometry, radar, and nuclear fusion. He continued developing the idea, and filed a patent application in April 1959. The U.S. Patent Office denied his application, and awarded a patent to Bell Labs, in 1960. That provoked a twenty-eight-year lawsuit, featuring scientific prestige and money as the stakes. Gould won his first minor patent in 1977, yet it was not until 1987 that he won the first significant patent lawsuit victory, when a Federal judge ordered the U.S. Patent Office to issue patents to Gould for the optically pumped and the gas discharge laser devices. On May 16, 1960, Theodore H. Maiman operated the first functioning laser,[11][12] at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California, ahead of several research teams, including those of Townes, at Columbia University, Arthur Schawlow, at Bell Labs,[13] and Gould, at the TRG (Technical Research Group) company. Maimans functional laser used a solid-state flashlamp-pumped synthetic ruby crystal to produce red laser light, at 694 nanometres wavelength; however, the device only was capable of pulsed operation, because of its threelevel pumping design scheme. Later in 1960, the Iranian physicist Ali Javan, and William R. Bennett, and Donald Herriott, constructed the first gas laser, using helium and neon that was capable of continuous operation in the infrared (U.S. Patent 3,149,290); later, Javan received the Albert Einstein Award in 1993. Basov and Javan proposed the semiconductor laser diode concept. In 1962, Robert N. Hall demonstrated the first laser diode device, made of gallium arsenide and emitted at 850 nm the near-infrared band of the spectrum. Later, in 1962, Nick Holonyak, Jr. demonstrated the first semiconductor laser with a visible emission. This first semiconductor laser could only be used in pulsed-beam operation, and when cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures (77 K). In 1970, Zhores Alferov, in the USSR, and Izuo Hayashi and Morton Panish of Bell Telephone Laboratories also independently developed roomtemperature, continual-operation diode lasers, using the heterojunction structure.

PRINCIPLE
Absorption,spontaneous emission and stimulated emission:

As we all know that atoms and molecules can exist only in certain energy states. The state of lowest energy is called the ground state; all other states have more energy than the ground state and are called excited states. Each excited state, of which there are many, has a fixed amount of energy over and above that of the ground state. Under ordinary conditions, almost all atoms and molecules are in their ground states. Three types of processes are possible for a two-level atomic system. In the first, an incoming photon excites the atomic system from a lower energy state into a higher energy state. This is called absorption or sometimes stimulated absorption. It is called stimulated absorptions because of the fact that the atoms absorb the incident energy at certain frequencies only. Stimulated absorption occurs when a photon strikes an atom with just exactly the proper energy to induce an electronic transition between two energy states. In case a broadband light is incident on a given two level atomic system, we can observe that the complete spectrum is not absorbed but only certain discrete lines are absorbed depending on the difference in their energy levels. This process reduces the lower level population and in the process increases the upper level population. The population or the number of atoms in states E1 and E2 at any time would be N1 and N2 respectively. When radiation passes through a material, it is absorbed according to: Ix = I0e-x (1)

Where Ix is the radiance after traveling distance x through the material with absorption coefficient as a and I0 is the initial intensity of light. The absorption depends on the population difference between N1 and N2 and the refractive index of the medium. Rate of stimulated absorption, R12 (abs), from level 1 to 2 is given as: R12 (abs) = B12 N1 (2)

Where B12 is the Einstein's coefficient for stimulated absorption and has the units as cm3/s2J, N1 is the population in the ground state and is the energy density per unit frequency of the

incoming

photons.

Once the atom or molecule has been produced in its excited state, there is a probability that it will emit radiation again and return to a lower energy state. This lower energy state may be either the ground state or still one of the excited states but having lower energy level. In the process, a photon is emitted. In this emission process, where the atoms spontaneously goes to a lower energy state through the emission of a photon is called spontaneous emission or fluorescence. This emission process is a random one and the emitted light goes off in all directions, and the wave properties of the light are randomly out of step with each other and thus are incoherent.

The rate of spontaneous emission, R21 (spon), from level 2 to 1 is given as: R21 (spon) = A21 N2 (3)

Where A21 is the coefficient of spontaneous emission and has the unit of s-1, N2 is the number of atoms in level 2.

One can observe that this spontaneous decay of the upper level takes place in the absence of an electromagnetic field and the rate is proportional to the population of that level and thus does not depend on the intensity of the excitation source. It is purely a statistical phenomenon related with time and space and is dependent on the lifetime of the excited state. If the transition lifetime is very large, it is considered as a forbidden transition.

Excited atoms can loose their energy not only by spontaneous emission, but also by induced or stimulated emission and therefore the emission output of the system consists of spontaneous and stimulated emissions. The probability of stimulated emission is proportional to the intensity of the energy density of external radiation and the induced emission has a firm phase relationship with it, unlike spontaneous emission. Since the spontaneous photons have no phase relations with each other, the output is incoherent. But stimulated emission has the same phase, direction, spectral and polarization properties as the stimulating field and both are indistinguishable in all aspects. Consequently, the laser output is coherent. In fact it is this stimulated emission, under certain conditions as explained in the earlier section that comes

out of the laser device as laser. Rate of stimulated emission, R21 (stim), from level 2 to 1 is given as: R21 (stim) = B21 N2 (4)

Where B21 is the Einstein's coefficient for stimulated emission and has the dimensions as m3/s2J, N2 is the population in the excited state and is the energy density per unit frequency of the triggering photons.

Considering an ideal material with only two non-degenerate energy levels, where absorption, spontaneous emission and stimulated emission takes place, one can arrive at the following conclusion.

Absorption = spontaneous emission + stimulated emission i.e. B12N1 r(n) = A21N2 + B21N2 r This situation is shown in the figure 1. (5)

At any given instance, under normal circumstances, both stimulated and spontaneous emissions may occur, but the probability of stimulated emission is pretty low. One can find out this ratio of spontaneous to stimulated emission using one of the following equations:

(6)

(7) where is the radiation energy density and is equal to of frequency , N being the number of photons

per unit volume and k is Boltzmann's constant. Considering a case of

ordinary bulb having a filament temperature of about 5000K and emitting radiation in the wavelength range of 0.6 micron corresponding to frequency of 5 x 10 14 Hz, the probability of stimulated emission is approximately one hundredth of that of the spontaneous emission. At lower temperatures, it would even be orders less than this.

The ratio of the probability of spontaneous to stimulated light emission depends directly on the frequency of emission or inversely to the wavelength. Thus in the microwave region, stimulated emission is more probable than spontaneous, hence the early production of the maser. In the optical region, spontaneous emission is more likely than stimulated emission and this gets worse as we go into the UV and X-ray regions of the spectrum.

Under thermal equilibrium, the population N2 and N1 of levels E2 and E1 respectively governed by the fact that the rate of upward transitions should be equal to rate of downward transitions.

The population density of atoms N1 and N2 in ground level E1 and excited state E2 can be estimated using Boltzmann's relationship as follows:

(8)

Since, (E2 - E1) / kT is always positive, irrespective of the value of temperature T, N2 must be less than N1 if the system is remain at thermal equilibrium. At the most the excited state population N2 (t) reaches a steady state at t, and the highest proportion of atoms that can exist in the excited state N2/Ntotal<1/2. Under these conditions the material always acts as an absorber of incident photons.

The above discussion implies that in a two level system the number of atoms in the excited state can never exceed the number in the ground state and hence can never work as a laser. If the system is to act as a laser, an incident photon must have a higher probability of causing stimulated emission than of being absorbed i.e. the rate of stimulated emission must exceed that of absorption. In other words, the laser action is possible only when N2 > N1. This nonequilibrium condition is known as called population inversion.

Before we discuss about the techniques of population inversion and laser action, these are some additional important points related to Absorption, spontaneous emission and stimulated emission: In case of spontaneous emission of a photon, the probability of its emission is inversely related to the average length of time that an atom can reside in the upper level of the transition before it relaxes. This time is known as the SPONTANEOUS LIFETIME. Typically, the spontaneous lifetime is of the order of 10-8 - 10-9 sec. The shorter the spontaneous lifetime, the greater is the probability that spontaneous emission will occur. In certain materials, there are energy levels, which has the spontaneous

lifetime of the order of microseconds to a few milliseconds. These levels are known as METASTABLE levels. The probability of transitions involving metastable levels is relatively low. As the likelihood of spontaneous emission decreases the conditions that favor stimulated emission are enhanced. If an atom is excited into a metastable state it can stay there long enough for a photon of the correct frequency to arrive. Such a situation promotes stimulated emission at the expense of spontaneous emission. In case of stimulated emission, atoms in an upper energy level can be triggered or stimulated in phase by an incoming photon of a specific energy. The incident photon must have an energy corresponding to the energy difference between the upper and lower states. The emitted photons have the same energy as incident photon. These photons are in phase with the triggering photon and also travel in its direction. Stimulated processes like stimulated absorption, or stimulated emission require incoming photons of the right frequency, whereas spontaneous emission can take place in the absence of incoming photon also. Spontaneous emission is completely isotropic. Stimulated processes, on the other hand, have a built-in preference for emission in the direction of the incident flux of photons.

Population

Inversion

and

Laser

Operation

As discussed above, whenever light is incident on the material, there is competition between absorption, spontaneous emission and stimulated emission processes. Under normal equilibrium conditions, the population of various levels is given by Boltzmann's relationship and thus N2 will always be less than N1. Further, stimulated photon emission is much less than the spontaneous photon emission and the absorption. For a system to work as a laser one

requires that stimulated emission should exceed photon absorption; it leads us to the following two conditions: N2 > N1: i.e. Population Inversion As per equation (6) or (7), the value of (the radiation energy

First condition cannot be achieved under thermal equilibrium conditions. This implies that in order to create population inversion, one must look for non-thermal equilibrium system and thus the need for special laser materials.

The second condition that requires higher value of r necessitates the use of an additional supply of large amount of energy of correct wavelength to excite the desired transition. The process is known as pumping. Various techniques include optical, electrical, chemical, gas dynamic etc.

Population inversion though is the primary condition, but in itself is not sufficient for producing a laser. As there are certain losses of the emitted photons within the material itself in addition to spontaneous emission, one has to think about the geometry that can overcome these losses and there is overall gain. This requires an optical cavity or resonator.

The principle behind the laser is like this. Suppose we can produce a large number of atoms all in excited states. If one of the atoms emitted spontaneously, then the emitted photon would stimulate other atoms to emit. These emitted photons would, in turn, stimulate further emission. The result would be an intense burst of coherent radiation.

These been below:

issues

have

discussed

A representative laser system is shown in Figure (2). It consists of three basic parts.

An active medium with a suitable set of energy levels to support laser action. A source of pumping energy in order to establish a population inversion. An optical cavity or resonator to introduce optical feedback and so maintain the gain of the system overcoming all losses.

Brief description of each of the above components and their basic function are given below. 1. Active laser medium or gain medium:

Laser medium is the heart system responsible of the and laser is for

producing gain and subsequent generation of laser. It can be a crystal, solid, liquid, semiconductor or gas medium and can be pumped to a higher energy state. The material should be of controlled purity, size and shape and should have the suitable energy levels to support population inversion. In other words, it

must have a metastable state to support stimulated emission. Most lasers are based on 3 or 4 level energy level systems, which depends on the lasing medium. These systems are shown in figs 3a and 3b. In case of a three-level laser, the material is pumped from level 1 to level 3, which decays rapidly to level 2 through spontaneous emission. Level 2 is a metastable level and promotes stimulated emission from level 2 to level 1.

On the other hand in a four level laser, the material is pumped to level 4, which is a fast decaying level, and the atoms decay rapidly to level 3, which level. is a The

metastable

stimulated emission takes place from level 3 to level 2 from where the atoms decay back to level 1. Four level lasers is an improvement on a system based on three level systems. In this case, the laser transition takes place between the third and second excited states. Since lower laser level 2 is a fast decaying level which ensures that it rapidly gets empty and as such always supports the population inversion condition. 2. Excitation or pumping mechanism: Absorption of the energy by the atoms, electrons, ions or molecules as the case may be, of the active medium is a primary requisite in the generation of laser. In order to excite these elements to higher energy levels, an excitation or pumping mechanism is necessary. It is well known that under the equilibrium state, as per Boltzman?s conditions, higher energy levels are much less populated than the lower energy levels. One of the requirements of laser action is population inversion in the levels concerned. i.e. to have larger population in the upper levels than in the lower ones. Otherwise absorption will dominate at the cost of stimulated emission. There are various types of excitation or pumping mechanisms available, the most commonly used ones are optical, electrical, thermal or chemical techniques, which depends on the type of the laser gain medium employed. For example, Solid state lasers usually employ optical pumping from high energy xenon flash lamps (e.g., ruby, Nd:YAG) or from a second pump laser or laser diode array (e.g., DPSS frequency doubled green lasers). Gas lasers use an AC or DC

electrical discharge through the gas medium, or external RF excitation, electron beam bombardment, or a chemical reaction. The DC electrical discharge is most common for 'small' gas lasers (e.g., helium-neon, argon ion, etc.). DC most often pumps semiconductor lasers current. Liquid (dye) lasers are usually pumped optically. 3. Optical resonator: Optical resonator plays a very important role in the generation of the laser output, in providing high directionality to the laser beam as well as producing gain in the active medium to overcome the losses due to, straying away of photons from the laser medium, diffraction losses due to definite sizes of the mirrors, radiation losses inside the active medium due to absorption and scattering etc. In order to sustain laser action, one has to confine the laser medium and the pumping mechanism in a special way that should promote stimulated emission rather than spontaneous emission. In practice, photons need to be confined in the system to allow the number of photons created by stimulated emission to exceed all other mechanisms. This is achieved by bounding the laser medium between two mirrors as shown in figure 2. On one end of the active medium is the high reflectance mirror (100% reflecting) or the rear mirror and on the other end is the partially reflecting or transmissive mirror or the output coupler. The laser emanates from the output coupler, as it is partially transmissive. Stimulated photons can bounce back and forward along the cavity, creating more stimulated emission as they go. In the process, any photons which are either not of the correct frequency or do not travel along the optical axis are lost.

Laser action: Interaction of electromagnetic radiation with matter produces absorption and spontaneous emission. Absorption and spontaneous emission are natural processes. For the generation of laser, stimulated emission is essential. Stimulated emission has to be induced or stimulated and is generated under special conditions as stated by Einstein in his famous paper of 1917. i.e. ?when the population inversion exists between upper and lower levels among atomic systems, it is possible to realize amplified stimulated emission and the stimulated emission has the same frequency and phase as the incident radiation?. Einstein combined Plank? law with Boltzmann?s statistics in formulating the concept of stimulated emission. In electronic, atomic, molecular or ionic systems the upper energy levels are less populated than the lower energy levels under equilibrium conditions. Pumping mechanism excites say, atoms to a higher energy level by absorption (Figs.3a and 3b).

The atom stays at the higher level for a certain duration and decays to the lower stable ground level spontaneously, emitting a photon, with a wavelength decided by the difference between the upper and the lower energy levels. This is referred to as natural or spontaneous emission and the photon is called spontaneous photon. The spontaneous emission or fluorescence has no preferred direction and the photons emitted have no phase relations with each other, thus generating an incoherent light output (Fig.4). But it is not necessary that the atom is always de-excited to ground state. It can go to an intermediate state, called metastable state with a radiation less transition, where it stays for a much longer period than the upper level and comes down to lower level or to the ground state. Since period of stay of atoms in the metastable state is large, it is possible to have a much larger number of atoms in metastable level in comparison to the lower level so that the population of metastable state and the lower or ground state is reversed. i.e. there are more atoms in the upper metastable level than the lower level. This condition is referred to as population inversion. Once this is achieved, laser action is initiated in the following fashion. The atom in the metastable state comes down to the ground state emitting a photon. This photon can stimulate an atom in the metastable state to release its photon in phase with it. The photon thus released is called stimulated photon. It moves in the same direction as the initiating photon, has the same wavelength and polarization and is in phase with it, thus producing amplification. Since there are a large number of initiating photons, it forms an initiating electromagnetic radiation field. An avalanche of stimulated photons is generated, as the photons traveling along the length of the active medium stimulates a number of excited atoms in the metastable state to release their photons. This is referred to as the stimulated emission. These photons are fully reflected by the rear reflector (100% reflective) and the number and consequently the intensity of stimulated photons increases as they traverse through the active medium, thus increasing the intensity of radiation field of stimulated emission. At the output coupler, a part of these photons are reflected and the rest is transmitted as the laser output. This action is repeated and the reflected photons after striking the rear mirror, reach the output coupler in the return path. The intensity of the laser output increases as the pumping continues. When the input pumping energy reduces, the available initiating and subsequently the stimulated photons decrease considerably and the gain of the system is not able to overcome the losses, thus laser output ceases. Since the stimulation process was started by the initiating photons, the emitted photons can combine coherently, as all of them are in phase with each other, unlike in the case of spontaneous emission and coherent laser light is emitted .Though the laser action will

continue as long as the energy is given to the active medium, it may be stated that pulsed laser is obtained if the population inversion is available in a transient fashion and continuous wave (CW) laser is possible if the population inversion is maintained in a steady-state basis. If the input energy is given by say a flash lamp, the output will be a pulsed output and the laser is called a pulsed laser. If equilibrium can be achieved between the number of photons emitted and the number of atoms in the metastable level by pumping with a continuous arc lamp instead of a flash lamp, then it is possible to achieve a continuous laser output, which is called continuous wave laser.

We may conclude that, laser action is preceded by three processes, namely, absorption, spontaneous emission and stimulated emission - absorption of energy to populate upper levels, spontaneous emission to produce the initial photons for stimulation and finally, stimulated emission for generation of coherent output or laser.

MODE OF WAVES
Continuous and pulsed modes of operation
A laser can be classified as operating in either continuous or pulsed mode, depending on whether the power output is essentially continuous over time or whether its output takes the form of pulses of light on one or another time scale. Of course even a laser whose output is normally continuous can be intentionally turned on and off at some rate in order to create pulses of light. When the modulation rate is on time scales much slower than the cavity lifetime and the time period over which energy can be stored in the lasing medium or pumping mechanism, then it is still classified as a "modulated" or "pulsed" continuous wave laser. Most laser diodes used in communication systems fall in that category.

Continuous wave operation

Some applications of lasers depend on a beam whose output power is constant over time. Such a laser is known as continuous wave (CW). Many types of lasers can be made to operate in continuous wave mode to satisfy such an application. Many of these lasers actually lase in several longitudinal modes at the same time, and beats between the slightly different optical frequencies of those oscillations will in fact produce amplitude variations on time scales shorter than the round-trip time (the reciprocal of the frequency spacing between modes), typically a few nanoseconds or less. In most cases these lasers are still termed "continuous wave" as their output power is steady when averaged over any longer time periods, with the very high frequency power variations having little or no impact in the intended application. (However the term is not applied to mode locked lasers, where the intention is to create very short pulses at the rate of the round-trip time). For continuous wave operation it is required for the population inversion of the gain medium to be continually replenished by a steady pump source. In some lasing media this is impossible. In some other lasers it would require pumping the laser at a very high continuous power level which would be impractical or destroy the laser by producing excessive heat. Such lasers cannot be run in CW mode.

Pulsed operation
Pulsed operation of lasers refers to any laser not classified as continuous wave, so that the optical power appears in pulses of some duration at some repetition rate. This encompasses a wide range of technologies addressing a number of different motivations. Some lasers are pulsed simply because they cannot be run in continuous mode. In other cases the application requires the production of pulses having as large an energy as possible. Since the pulse energy is equal to the average power divided by the repetition rate, this goal can sometimes be satisfied by lowering the rate of pulses so that more energy can be built up in between pulses. In laser ablation for example, a small volume of material at the surface of a work piece can be evaporated if it is heated in a very short time, whereas supplying the energy gradually would allow for the heat to be absorbed into the bulk of the piece, never attaining a sufficiently high temperature at a particular point. Other applications rely on the peak pulse power (rather than the energy in the pulse), especially in order to obtain nonlinear optical effects. For a given pulse energy, this requires creating pulses of the shortest possible duration utilizing techniques such as Q-switching. The optical bandwidth of a pulse cannot be narrower than the reciprocal of the pulse width. In the case of extremely short pulses, that implies lasing over a considerable bandwidth, quite contrary to the very narrow bandwidths typical of CW lasers. The lasing medium in some dye lasers and vibronic solid-state lasers produces optical gain over a wide bandwidth, making a laser possible which can thus generate pulses of light as short as a few femtoseconds (1015 s).

GENERAL TYPES OF LASER

There are many different types of lasers. The laser medium can be a solid, gas, liquid or semiconductor. Lasers are commonly designated by the type of lasing material employed:

Solid-state lasers have lasing material distributed in a solid matrix (such as the ruby

or neodymium:yttrium-aluminum garnet "Yag" lasers). The neodymium-Yag laser emits infrared light at 1,064 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is 1x10-9 meters. Lasers based on solid-state gain media (usually ion-doped crystals or glasses) Solid-state lasers are lasers based on solid-state gain media such as crystals or glasses doped with rare earth or transition metal ions, or semiconductor lasers. (Although semiconductor lasers are of course also solid-state devices, they are often not included in the term solid-state lasers.) Ion-doped solid-state lasers (also sometimes called doped insulator lasers) can be made in the form of bulk lasers, fiber lasers, or other types of waveguide lasers. Solid-state lasers may generate output powers between a few milliwatts and (in high-power versions) many kilowatts.

Typical setups of solid-state bulk lasers, converting pump light (blue) into laser light (red): end-pumped (top) and side-pumped (bottom) versions.

Optical Pumping and Energy Storage

Many solid-state lasers are optically pumped with flash lamps or arc lamps. Such pump sources are relatively cheap and can provide very high powers. However, they lead to a fairly low power efficiency, moderate lifetime, and strong thermal effects such as thermal lensing in the gain medium. For such reasons, laser diodes are very often used for pumping solidstate lasers. Such diode-pumped solid-state lasers (DPSS lasers, also called all-solid-state lasers) have many advantages, in particular a compact setup, long lifetime, and often very good beam quality. Therefore, their share of the market is rapidly rising. The laser transitions of rare-earth or transition-metal-doped crystals or glasses are normally weakly allowed transitions, i.e., transitions with very low oscillator strength, which leads to long radiative upper-state lifetimes and consequently to good energy storage, with upper-state lifetimes of microseconds to milliseconds. Although this is beneficial for nanosecond pulse generation (see below), it can also lead to unwanted spiking phenomena in continuous-wave lasers, e.g. when the pump source is switched on. Pulse Generation The long upper-state lifetimes makes solid-state lasers very suitable for Q switching: the laser crystal can easily store an amount of energy which, when released in the form of a nanosecond pulse, leads to a peak power which is orders of magnitude above the achievable average power. Bulk lasers can thus easily achieve millijoule pulse energies and megawatt peak powers.

In mode-locked operation, solid-state lasers can generate ultrashort pulses with durations measured in picoseconds or femtoseconds (minimum: 5 fs, achieved with Ti:sapphire lasers). With passive mode locking, they have a tendency for Q-switching instabilities, if these are not suppressed with suitable measures. Wavelength Tuning In terms of their potential for wavelength tuning, different types of solid-state lasers differ considerably. Most rare-earth-doped laser crystals, such as Nd:YAG and Nd:YVO4, have a fairly small gain bandwidth of the order of 1 nm or less, so that tuning is possible only within a rather limited range. On the other hand, tuning ranges of tens of nanometers and more are possible with rare-earth-doped glasses, and particularly with transition-metal-doped crystals such as Ti:sapphire, Cr:LiSAF and Cr:ZnSe ( vibronic lasers). Types of Solid-state Lasers Examples of different types of solid-state lasers are:

Small diode-pumped Nd:YAG ( YAG lasers) or Nd:YVO4 lasers ( vanadate

lasers) often operate with output powers between a few milliwatts (for miniature setups) and a few watts. Q-switched versions generate pulses with durations of a few nanoseconds, microjoule pulse energies and peak powers of many kilowatts. Intracavity frequency doubling can be used for green output.

Single-frequency operation, typically achieved with unidirectional ring lasers (e.g.

NPROs = nonplanar ring oscillators) or microchip lasers, allows for operation with very small linewidth in the lower kilohertz region.

Larger lasers in side-pumped or end-pumped configurations (see above), having the

geometry of rod lasers, slab lasers or thin-disk lasers, are suitable for output powers up to several kilowatts. Particularly thin-disk lasers can still offer very high beam quality, and also a high power efficiency.

Q-switched Nd:YAG lasers are still widely used in lamp-pumped versions. Pulsed

pumping allows for high pulse energies, whereas the average output powers are often moderate (e.g. a few watts). The cost of such lamp-pumped lasers is lower than for diodepumped versions with similar output powers.

Fiber lasers are a special kind of solid-state lasers, with a high potential for high

average output power, high power efficiency, high beam quality, and broad

Wavelength tunability. See also the articles on fiber lasers versus bulk lasers and on

Neodymium-YAG Laser An example of a solid-state laser, the neodymium-YAG uses the Nd3+ ion to dope the yttrium-aluminum-garnet (YAG) host crystal to produce the triplet geometry which makes population inversion possible. Neodymium-YAG lasers have become very important because they can be used to produce high powers. Such lasers have been constructed to produce over a kilowatt of continuous laser power at 1065 nm and can achieve extremely high powers in a pulsed mode. Neodymium-YAG lasers are used in pulse mode in laser oscillators for the production of a series of very short pulses for research with femtosecond time resolution.

Neodymium-Glass Lasers Neodymium glass lasers have emerged as the design choice for research in laser-initiated thermonuclear fusion. These pulsed lasers generate pulses as short as 10-12 seconds with peak powers of 109 kilowatts.

Ruby Laser The ruby laser is the first type of laser actually constructed, first demonstrated in 1960 by T. H. Maiman. The ruby mineral (corundum) is aluminum oxide with a small amount(about 0.05%) of chromium which gives it its characteristic pink or red color by absorbing green and blue light. The ruby laser is used as a pulsed laser, producing red light at 694.3 nm. After receiving a pumping flash from the flash tube, the laser light emerges for as long as the excited atoms persist in the ruby rod, which is typically about a millisecond. A pulsed ruby laser was used for the famous laser ranging experiment which was conducted with a corner reflector placed on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts. This determined the distance to the Moon with an accuracy of about 15 cm.

Pumping Levels for Ruby Laser

Ruby Laser and Flash Tube

Gas lasers (helium and helium-neon, HeNe, are the most common gas lasers) have a primary output of visible red light. CO2 lasers emit energy in the far-infrared, and are used for cutting hard materials. GAS LASER :A gas laser is a laser in which an electric current is discharged through a gas to produce coherent light. The gas laser was the first continuous-light laser and the first laser to operate "on the principle of converting electrical energy to a laser light output. The first gas laser, the Heliumneon laser (HeNe), was co-invented by Iranian physicist Ali Javan and American physicist William R. Bennett, Jr. in 1960. It produced a coherent light beam in the infrared region of the spectrum at 1.15 micrometres.

Types of gas laser

Gas lasers using many gases have been built and used for many purposes. The Heliumneon or HeNe laser can be made to oscillate at over 160 different wavelengths by adjusting the cavity Q to peak at the desired wavelength. This can be done by adjusting the spectral response of the mirrors or by using a dispersive element (Littrow prism) in the cavity. Units operating at 633 nm are very common in schools and laboratories because of their low cost and near perfect beam qualities.

Carbon dioxide, or CO2 lasers can emit hundreds of kilowatts at 9.6 m and 10.6 m, and are often used in industry for cutting and welding. The efficiency of a CO2 laser is over 10%. The carbon dioxide gas laser is capable of continuous output powers above 10 kilowatts. It is also capable of extremely high power pulse operatin. It exhibits laser action at several infrared frequencies but none in the visible. Operating in a manner similar to the helium-neon laser, it employs an electric discharge for pumping, using a percentage of nitrogen gas as a pumping gas.

The CO2 laser is the most efficient laser, capable of operating at more than 30% efficiency. That's a lot more efficient than an ordinary incandescent light bulb at producing visible light (about 90% of the output of a lightbulb filament is invisible). The carbon dioxide laser finds many applications in industry, particularly for welding and cutting. Carbon Monoxide or "CO" lasers have the potential for very large outputs, but the use of this type of laser is limited by the extreme toxicity of Carbon Monoxide gas. Human operators must be protected from this deadly gas and it is extremely corrosive to many materials included seals, gaskets, etc. Thus extreme care must be used when constructing and using CO lasers. Argon-ion lasers emit light in the range 351528.7 nm. Depending on the optics and the laser tube a different number of lines is usable but the most commonly used lines are 458 nm, 488 nm and 514.5 nm. A nitrogen transverse electrical discharge in gas at atmospheric pressure (TEA) laser is an inexpensive gas laser producing UV light at 337.1 nm. Metal ion lasers are gas lasers that generate deep ultraviolet wavelengths. Helium-silver (HeAg) 224 nm and neon-copper (NeCu) 248 nm are two examples. These lasers have particularly narrow oscillation linewidths of less than 3 GHz (0.5 picometers), making them candidates for use in fluorescence suppressed Raman spectroscopy.

Excimer lasers
Excimer lasers are powered by a chemical reaction involving an excited dimer, or excimer, which is a short-lived dimeric or heterodimeric molecule formed from two species (atoms), at least one of which is in an excited electronic state. They typically produce ultraviolet light, and are used in semiconductor photolithography and in LASIK eye surgery. Commonly used excimer molecules include F2 (fluorine, emitting at 157 nm), and noble gas compounds (ArF [193 nm], KrCl [222 nm], KrF [248 nm], Excimer lasers (the name is derived from the terms excited and dimers) use reactive gases, such as chlorine and fluorine, mixed with inert gases such as argon, krypton or xenon. When electrically stimulated, a pseudo molecule (dimer) is produced. When lased, the dimer produces light in the ultraviolet range.

Dye lasers use complex organic dyes, such as rhodamine 6G, in liquid solution or

suspension as lasing media. They are tunable over a broad range of wavelengths. Semiconductor lasers, sometimes called diode lasers, are not solid-state lasers. These electronic devices are generally very small and use low power. They may be built into larger arrays, such as the writing source in some laser.

Liquid laser
A

laser whose active material is dissolved in a liquid contained in a transparent cylindrical

shell; rare-earth ions in suitable dissolved molecules and organic dye solutions are used.
A

laser with a liquid active material. The advantage of a liquid laser is the feasibility of

cooling the liquid by circulation. This permits production of higher energy both in pulsed and continuous operation.

In the first liquid lasers solutions of rare-earth chelates were used. They have not yet

found application because of the low attainable energy and the insufficient stability of the chelates. Liquid lasers using inorganic active liquids (proposed and synthesized in the USSR) have high pulse energies at considerable mean power. In addition liquid lasers generate radiation with a narrow frequency spectrum.

Liquid lasers using solutions of organic dyes have some interesting properties. The

broad spectral lines of organic dyes permit the construction of a liquid laser with continuous tuning of the emitted wavelength within a range of several hundreds of A. By changing the dyes, the whole visible spectrum and a part of the infrared spectrum can be covered. Liquid dye lasers usually use solid lasers as a pumping source. Some dyes can be pumped by special flash fluorescent lamps, which give shorter and more intensive flashes of white light than are given by the usual flash lamps (less than 50 microseconds).

There are three types of liquid lasers :- organometallic chelates, organic dye lasers,

and neodymium - selenium oxychloride. The europium and terbium chelates, historically the first liquid lasers, are characterized by extremely high absorption by the organic moiety in the pumping regions thereby preventing any significant penetration of pump flux into the laser solution. This inherent limitation dictated the use of small active volumes in narrow-bore (1 mm) laser cells. The resulting high threshold, low output liquid lasers could not compete in performance with the more efficient solids

CARBON DIOXIDE LASER

Introduction :Carbon dioxide (chemical formula CO2) is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state, as a trace gas at a concentration of 0.039% by volume. As part of the carbon cycle known as photosynthesis, plants, algae, and cyanobacteria absorb carbon dioxide, light, and water to produce carbohydrate energy for themselves and oxygen as a waste product.[1] But in darkness photosynthesis cannot occur, and during the resultant respiration small amounts of carbon dioxide are produced. Carbon dioxide also is a byproduct of combustion; emitted from volcanoes, hot springs, and geysers; and freed from carbonate rocks by dissolution. As of July 2011, carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is at a concentration of 392 ppm by volume Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide fluctuate slightly with the change of the seasons, driven primarily by seasonal plant growth in the Northern Hemisphere. Concentrations of carbon dioxide fall during the northern spring and summer as plants

consume the gas, and rise during the northern autumn and winter as plants go dormant, die and decay. Taking all this into account, the concentration of CO2 grew by about 2 ppm in 2009. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas as it transmits visible light but absorbs strongly in the infrared and near-infrared, before slowly re-emitting the infrared at the same wavelength as what was absorbed. Before the advent of human-caused release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, concentrations tended to increase with increasing global temperatures, acting as a positive feedback for changes induced by other processes such as orbital cycles. There is a seasonal cycle in CO2 concentration associated primarily with the Northern Hemisphere growing season. Carbon dioxide has no liquid state at pressures below 5.1 standard atmospheres (520 kPa). At 1 atmosphere (near mean sea level pressure), the gas deposits directly to a solid at temperatures below 78 C (108 F; 195 K) and the solid sublimes directly to a gas above 78 C. In its solid state, carbon dioxide is commonly called dry ice. CO2 is an acidic oxide: an aqueous solution turns litmus from blue to pink. It is the anhydride of carbonic acid, an acid which is unstable in aqueous solution, from which it cannot be concentrated. In organisms carbonic acid production is catalysed by the enzyme, carbonic anhydrase. CO2 + H2O H2CO3

CO2 is toxic in higher concentrations: 1% (10,000 ppm) will make some people feel drowsy.[7] Concentrations of 7% to 10% cause dizziness, headache, visual and hearing dysfunction, and unconsciousness within a few minutes to an hour. The carbon dioxide (CO2) laser is the powerhouse for high tech industrial cutting and welding of metals and many other materials. Small CO2 lasers are used for marking of metal, wood, and composites, and in medicine and surgery. Even a 'small' CO2 laser produces 10s of watts of beam power and the largest are in the 100 kW range!

Its output is at 10.6 um (10,600 nm) or mid-IR. This wavelength is about 10 to 30 times longer than the other lasers under discussion and often considered a source of a heat beam than a light beam. At this wavelength, normal glass and plastic optics are either too lossy or

totally opaque so alternatives must be found both for the end-mirrors and any other mirrors, lenses, or prisms required by the external optical setup. Divergence/diffraction effects are also increased by this same factor so obtaining a collimated beam is also more difficult. Many common materials including wood, paper, plastics, composites, and properly prepared metal surfaces absorb quite well at this wavelength so the CO2 laser makes an effective

marking, cutting, welding, and heat treating tool. With a bit of resourcefulness, no fancy glass work is needed. The power supply can be just a neon sign transformer on a Variac. The required mechanical precision isn't as great either

so even if your machining skills are quite limited, adequate mirror mounts and structural components can be fabricated relatively easily. And, unlike the other traditional gas lasers (HeNe, Ar/Kr ion, HeHg, CuCl/CuBr, and the like), once constructed and aligned, the CO2 laser requires minimal maintenance and can potentially be a useful tool for real applications IFF it is packaged appropriately and provided with essential safety interlocks and protection devices. In fact, some commercial axial flow CO2 laser are just refined versions of what an amateur can build. See the section:.

CONSTRUCTION DETAIL AND DIAGRAM:Because CO2 lasers operate in the infrared, special materials are necessary for their construction. Typically, the mirrors are silvered, while windows and lenses are made of either germanium or zinc selenide. For high power applications, gold mirrors and zinc selenide windows and lenses are preferred. There are also diamond windows and even lenses in use. Diamond windows are extremely expensive, but their high thermal conductivity and hardness make them useful in high-power applications and in dirty environments. Optical elements made of diamond can even be sand blasted without losing their optical properties. Historically, lenses and windows were made out of salt (either sodium chloride or potassium chloride). While the material was inexpensive, the lenses and windows degraded slowly with exposure to atmospheric moisture. The most basic form of a CO2 laser consists of a gas discharge (with a mix close to that specified above) with a total reflector at one end, and an output coupler (usually a semireflective coated zinc selenide mirror) at the output end. The reflectivity of the output coupler

is typically around 515%. The laser output may also be edge-coupled in higher power systems to reduce optical heating problems. The CO2 laser can be constructed to have CW powers between milliwatts (mW) and hundreds of kilowatts (kW). It is also very easy to actively Q-switch a CO2 laser by means of a rotating mirror or an electro-optic switch, giving rise to Q-switched peak powers up to gigawatts (GW) of peak power. Because the laser transitions are actually on vibration-rotation bands of a linear triatomic molecule, the rotational structure of the P and R bands can be selected by a tuning element in the laser cavity. Because transmissive materials in the infrared are rather lossy, the frequency tuning element is almost always a diffraction grating. By rotating the diffraction grating, a particular rotational line of the vibrational transition can be selected. The finest frequency selection may also be obtained through the use of an etalon. In practice, together with isotopic substitution, this means that a continuous comb of frequencies separated by around 1 cm1 (30 GHz) can be used that extend from 880 to 1090 cm1. Such "line-tuneable" carbon dioxide lasers[4] are principally of interest in research applications.