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Lasers

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9 views

Lasers

Pdf

Uploaded by

ayomideissa21
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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LASERs

➢ Definition.
➢ Components of Lasers.
➢ Stimulated Emission.
➢ Types and Operating Principles of Lasers.
➢ Uses of Lasers.
DEFINITION
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated
emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of
radiation".
A laser differs from other sources of light in that it emits light which is coherent. Spatial coherence allows a laser to be
focused to a tight spot, enabling applications such as laser cutting and lithography. Spatial coherence also allows a laser
beam to stay narrow over great distances (collimation), enabling applications such as laser pointers and lidar. Lasers can
also have high temporal coherence, which allows them to emit light with a very narrow spectrum. Alternatively, temporal
coherence can be used to produce ultrashort pulses of light with a broad spectrum but durations as short as a femtosecond.
Lasers are used in optical disc drives, laser printers, barcode scanners, DNA sequencing instruments, fibre-optic,
semiconducting chip manufacturing (photolithography), and free-space optical communication, laser surgery and skin
treatments, cutting and welding materials, military and law enforcement devices for marking targets and measuring
range and speed, and in laser lighting displays for entertainment. Semiconductor lasers in the blue to near-UV have also
been used in place of light-emitting diodes (LED's) to excite fluorescence as a white light source. This permits a much
smaller emitting area due to the much greater radiance of a laser and avoids the droop suffered by LED's; such devices are
already used in some car headlamps.

COMPONENTS OF LASER
A laser consists of a gain medium, a mechanism to energize it, and something to provide optical feedback. The gain
medium is a material with properties that allow it to amplify light by way of stimulated emission. Light of a specific
wavelength that passes through the gain medium is amplified (increases in power). Feedback enables stimulated emission
to amplify predominantly the optical frequency at the peak of the gain-frequency curve. As stimulated emission grows,
eventually one frequency dominates over all others, meaning that a coherent beam has been formed. The process of
stimulated emission is analogous to that of an audio oscillator with positive feedback which can occur, for example, when
the speaker in a public-address system is placed in proximity to the microphone. The screech one hears is audio oscillation
at the peak of the gain-frequency curve for the amplifier.
For the gain medium to amplify light, it needs to be supplied with energy in a process called pumping. The energy is
typically supplied as an electric current or as light at a different wavelength. Pump light may be provided by a flash
lamp or by another laser.
The most common type of laser uses feedback from an optical cavity—a pair of mirrors on either end of the gain
medium. Light bounces back and forth between the mirrors, passing through the gain medium and being amplified each
time. Typically, one of the two mirrors, the output coupler, is partially transparent. Some of the light escapes through this
mirror. Depending on the design of the cavity (whether the mirrors are flat or curved), the light coming out of the laser may
spread out or form a narrow beam. In analogy to electronic oscillators, this device is sometimes called a laser oscillator.

Components of a typical laser:


1. Gain medium
2. Laser pumping energy
3. High reflector
4. Output coupler
5. Laser beam
STIMULATED EMISSION
In the classical view, the energy of an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus is larger for orbits further from
the nucleus of an atom. However, quantum mechanical effects force electrons to take on discrete positions in orbitals.
Thus, electrons are found in specific energy levels of an atom, two of which are shown below:
An electron in an atom can absorb energy from light (photons) or heat (phonons) only if there is a transition
between energy levels that matches the energy carried by the photon or phonon. For light, this means that any given
transition will only absorb one particular wavelength of light. Photons with the correct wavelength can cause an
electron to jump from the lower to the higher energy level. The photon is consumed in this process.
When an electron is excited from one state to that at a higher energy level with energy difference ΔE, it will
not stay that way forever. Eventually, a photon will be spontaneously created from the vacuum having energy ΔE.
Conserving energy, the electron transitions to a lower energy level which is not occupied, with transitions to different
levels having different time constants. This process is called "spontaneous emission". Spontaneous emission is a
quantum-mechanical effect and a direct physical manifestation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The emitted
photon has random direction, but its wavelength matches the absorption wavelength of the transition. This is the
mechanism of fluorescence and thermal emission.
A photon with the correct wavelength to be absorbed by a transition can also cause an electron to drop from
the higher to the lower level, emitting a new photon. The emitted photon exactly matches the original photon in
wavelength, phase, and direction. This process is called stimulated emission.

TYPES AND OPERATING PRINCIPLES


1. Gas lasers.
2. Chemical lasers.
3. Excimer lasers.
4. Solid-state lasers.
5. Fibre lasers.
6. Photonic crystal lasers.
7. Semiconductor lasers.
8. Dye lasers.
9. Free-electron lasers.
10. Natural lasers.

USES OF LASERS
1. The first widely noticeable use of lasers was the supermarket barcode scanner, introduced in 1974.
The laserdisc player, introduced in 1978, was the first successful consumer product to include a laser but the
compact disc player was the first laser-equipped device to become common, beginning in 1982 followed
shortly by laser printers.
2. Lasers have many uses in medicine, including laser surgery (particularly eye surgery), laser healing, kidney
stone treatment, ophthalmoscopy, and cosmetic skin treatments such
as acne treatment, cellulite and striae reduction, and hair removal.
Lasers are used to treat cancer by shrinking or destroying tumors or precancerous growths. They are most
commonly used to treat superficial cancers that are on the surface of the body or the lining of internal organs.
They are used to treat basal cell skin cancer and the very early stages of others
like cervical, penile, vaginal, vulvar, and non-small cell lung cancer. Laser therapy is often combined with
other treatments, such as surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy. Laser-induced interstitial
thermotherapy (LITT), or interstitial laser photocoagulation, uses lasers to treat some cancers using
hyperthermia, which uses heat to shrink tumors by damaging or killing cancer cells. Lasers are more precise
than traditional surgery methods and cause less damage, pain, bleeding, swelling, and scarring. A disadvantage
is that surgeons must have specialized training. It may be more expensive than other treatments.
3. A laser weapon is a laser that is used as a directed-energy weapon.

Some other uses are:


1. Communications: besides fibre-optic communication, lasers are used for free-space optical communication,
including laser communication in space.
2. Industry: cutting including converting thin materials, welding, material heat treatment, marking
parts (engraving and bonding), additive manufacturing or 3D printing processes such as selective laser
sintering and selective laser melting, non-contact measurement of parts and 3D scanning, and laser cleaning.
3. Military: marking targets, guiding munitions, missile defense, electro-optical countermeasures (EOCM), lidar,
blinding troops, firearms sight.
4. Law enforcement: LIDAR traffic enforcement. Lasers are used for latent fingerprint detection in the forensic
identification field.
5. Research: spectroscopy, laser ablation, laser annealing, laser scattering, laser interferometry, lidar, laser
capture microdissection, fluorescence microscopy, metrology, laser cooling.
6. Commercial products: laser printers, barcode scanners, thermometers, laser pointers, holograms, bubblegrams.
7. Entertainment: optical discs, laser lighting displays, laser turntables

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