Laser

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"Laser light" redirects here. For the song, see LaserLight. For laser light show, see laser lighting
display. For other uses, see Laser (disambiguation).

United States Air Force laser experiment

Direct exposure to a beam of blinding laser light, taken with a Canon EOS 400Dcamera. Do not ever attempt to look
straight into the laser beam, even if using a camera.

Red (660 & 635 nm), green (532 & 520 nm) and blue-violet (445 & 405 nm) lasers

A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated
emission of electromagnetic radiation. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for "light
amplification by stimulated emission of radiation".[1][2] The first laser was built in 1960
by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories, based on theoretical work by Charles
Hard Townesand Arthur Leonard Schawlow. A laser differs from other sources of light in that it emits
light coherently. 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. Lasers can also
have hightemporal coherence, which allows them to emit light with a very narrow spectrum, i.e., they
can emit a single color of light. Temporal coherence can be used to produce pulses of light as short
as a femtosecond.
Among their many applications, lasers are used in optical disk drives, laser printers, and barcode
scanners; fiber-optic 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 laser lighting displays in entertainment.

Contents
[hide]

1Fundamentals
o 1.1Terminology
2Design
3Laser physics
o 3.1Stimulated emission
o 3.2Gain medium and cavity
o 3.3The light emitted
o 3.4Quantum vs. classical emission processes
4Continuous and pulsed modes of operation
o 4.1Continuous wave operation
o 4.2Pulsed operation
4.2.1Q-switching
4.2.2Mode-locking
4.2.3Pulsed pumping
5History
o 5.1Foundations
o 5.2Maser
o 5.3Laser
o 5.4Recent innovations
6Types and operating principles
o 6.1Gas lasers
6.1.1Chemical lasers
6.1.2Excimer lasers
o 6.2Solid-state lasers
o 6.3Fiber lasers
o 6.4Photonic crystal lasers
o 6.5Semiconductor lasers
o 6.6Dye lasers
o 6.7Free-electron lasers
o 6.8Exotic media
7Uses
o 7.1Examples by power
o 7.2Hobby uses
o 7.3As weapons
o 7.4Telecommunications in space
8Safety
9See also
10References
 11Further reading
12External links

Fundamentals

Modern telescopes use laser technologies to compensate for the blurring effect of the Earths atmosphere.[3]

Lasers are distinguished from other light sources by their coherence. Spatial coherence is typically
expressed through the output being a narrow beam, which is diffraction-limited. Laser beams can be
focused to very tiny spots, achieving a very high irradiance, or they can have very low divergence in
order to concentrate their power at a great distance.
Temporal (or longitudinal) coherence implies a polarized wave at a single frequency whose phase is
correlated over a relatively great distance (the coherence length) along the beam.[4] A beam
produced by a thermal or other incoherent light source has an instantaneous amplitude
and phase that vary randomly with respect to time and position, thus having a short coherence
length.
Lasers are characterized according to their wavelength in a vacuum. Most "single wavelength" lasers
actually produce radiation in severalmodes having slightly differing frequencies (wavelengths), often
not in a single polarization. Although temporal coherence implies monochromaticity, there are lasers
that emit a broad spectrum of light or emit different wavelengths of light simultaneously. There are
some lasers that are not single spatial mode and consequently have light beams that diverge more
than is required by the diffraction limit. However, all such devices are classified as "lasers" based on
their method of producing light, i.e., stimulated emission. Lasers are employed in applications where
light of the required spatial or temporal coherence could not be produced using simpler technologies.
Terminology
Laser beams in fog, reflected on a car windshield

The word laser started as an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". In
modern usage, the term "light" includes electromagnetic radiation of any frequency, not only visible
light, hence the terms infrared laser, ultraviolet laser, X-ray laser, gamma-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.[5]
A laser that 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.[6] With the
widespread use of the original acronym as a common noun, optical amplifiers have come to be
referred to as "laser amplifiers", notwithstanding the apparent redundancy in that designation.
The back-formed verb to lase is frequently used in the field, meaning "to produce laser
light,"[7] 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

Components of a typical laser:

1. Gain medium
2. Laser pumping energy
3. High reflector
4. Output coupler
5. Laser beam
Animation explaining the stimulated emission and the laser principle

Main article: Laser construction

A laser consists of a gain medium, a mechanism to energize it, and something to provide
optical feedback.[8] 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).
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 cavitya 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, theoutput 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.
Most practical lasers contain additional elements that affect properties of the emitted light, such as
the polarization, wavelength, and shape of the beam.

Laser physics
See also: Laser science
Electrons and how they interact with electromagnetic fields are important in our understanding
of chemistry and physics.
Stimulated emission
Main article: Stimulated emission
In the classical view, the energy of an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus is larger for orbits further
from the nucleus of anatom. 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:
When an electron absorbs energy either from light (photons) or heat (phonons), it receives that
incident quantum of energy. But transitions are only allowed in between discrete energy levels such
as the two shown above. This leads to emission lines and absorption lines.
When an electron is excited from a lower to a higher energy level, it will not stay that way forever. An
electron in an excited state may decay to a lower energy state which is not occupied, according to a
particular time constant characterizing that transition. When such an electron decays without
external influence, emitting a photon, that is called "spontaneous emission". The phase associated
with the photon that is emitted is random. A material with many atoms in such an excited state may
thus result in radiation which is very spectrally limited (centered around one wavelength of light), but
the individual photons would have no common phase relationship and would emanate in random
directions. This is the mechanism of fluorescence and thermal emission.
An external electromagnetic field at a frequency associated with a transition can affect the quantum
mechanical state of the atom. As the electron in the atom makes a transition between two stationary
states (neither of which shows a dipole field), it enters a transition state which does have a dipole
field, and which acts like a small electric dipole, and this dipole oscillates at a characteristic
frequency. In response to the external electric field at this frequency, the probability of the atom
entering this transition state is greatly increased. Thus, the rate of transitions between two stationary
states is enhanced beyond that due to spontaneous emission. Such a transition to the higher state is
calledabsorption, and it destroys an incident photon (the photon's energy goes into powering the
increased energy of the higher state). A transition from the higher to a lower energy state, however,
produces an additional photon; this is the process of stimulated emission.
Gain medium and cavity
A heliumneon laser demonstration at the Kastler-Brossel Laboratory at Univ. Paris 6. The pink-orange glow running
through the center of the tube is from the electric discharge which produces incoherent light, just as in a neon tube.
This glowing plasma is excited and then acts as the gain mediumthrough which the internal beam passes, as it is
reflected between the two mirrors. Laser radiation output through the front mirror can be seen to produce a tiny
(about 1 mm in diameter) intense spot on the screen, to the right. Although it is a deep and pure red color, spots of
laser light are so intense that cameras are typically overexposed and distort their color.

Spectrum of a helium neon laser illustrating its very high spectral purity (limited by the measuring apparatus). The
0.002 nm bandwidth of the lasing medium is well over 10,000 times narrower than the spectral width of a light-
emitting diode (whose spectrum is shown here for comparison), with the bandwidth of a single longitudinal mode
being much narrower still.

The gain medium is excited by an external source of energy into an excited state. In most lasers this
medium consists of a population of atoms which have been excited into such a state by means of an
outside light source, or an electrical field which supplies energy for atoms to absorb and be
transformed into their excited states.
The gain medium of a laser is normally a material of controlled purity, size, concentration, and
shape, which amplifies the beam by the process of stimulated emission described above. This
material can be of any state: gas, liquid, solid, or plasma. The gain medium absorbs pump energy,
which raises some electrons into higher-energy ("excited") quantum states. Particles can interact
with light by either absorbing or emitting photons. Emission can be spontaneous or stimulated. In the
latter case, the photon is emitted in the same direction as the light that is passing by. When the
number of particles in one excited state exceeds the number of particles in some lower-energy
state, population inversion is achieved and the amount of stimulated emission due to light that
passes through is larger than the amount of absorption. Hence, the light is amplified. By itself, this
makes an optical amplifier. When an optical amplifier is placed inside a resonant optical cavity, one
obtains a laser oscillator.[9]
In a few situations it is possible to obtain lasing with only a single pass of EM radiation through the
gain medium, and this produces a laser beam without any need for a resonant or reflective cavity
(see for example nitrogen laser).[10] Thus, reflection in a resonant cavity is usually required for a
laser, but is not absolutely necessary.
The optical resonator is sometimes referred to as an "optical cavity", but this is a misnomer: lasers
use open resonators as opposed to the literal cavity that would be employed at microwave
frequencies in a maser. The resonator typically consists of two mirrors between which a coherent
beam of light travels in both directions, reflecting back on itself so that an average photon will pass
through the gain medium repeatedly before it is emitted from the output aperture or lost to diffraction
or absorption. If the gain (amplification) in the medium is larger than the resonator losses, then the
power of the recirculating light can rise exponentially. But each stimulated emission event returns an
atom from its excited state to the ground state, reducing the gain of the medium. With increasing
beam power the net gain (gain minus loss) reduces to unity and the gain medium is said to be
saturated. In a continuous wave (CW) laser, the balance of pump power against gain saturation and
cavity losses produces an equilibrium value of the laser power inside the cavity; this equilibrium
determines the operating point of the laser. If the applied pump power is too small, the gain will
never be sufficient to overcome the resonator losses, and laser light will not be produced. The
minimum pump power needed to begin laser action is called the lasing threshold. The gain medium
will amplify any photons passing through it, regardless of direction; but only the photons in a spatial
mode supported by the resonator will pass more than once through the medium and receive
substantial amplification.
The light emitted
The light generated by stimulated emission is very similar to the input signal in terms of
wavelength, phase, and polarization. This gives laser light its characteristic coherence, and allows it
to maintain the uniform polarization and often monochromaticity established by the optical cavity
design.
The beam in the cavity and the output beam of the laser, when travelling in free space (or a
homogeneous medium) rather than waveguides (as in an optical fiber laser), can be approximated
as a Gaussian beam in most lasers; such beams exhibit the minimum divergence for a given
diameter. However some high power lasers may be multimode, with the transverse modes often
approximated using HermiteGaussian or Laguerre-Gaussian functions. It has been shown that
unstable laser resonators (not used in most lasers) produce fractal shaped beams.[11] Near the beam
"waist" (orfocal region) it is highly collimated: the wavefronts are planar, normal to the direction of
propagation, with no beam divergence at that point. However, due to diffraction, that can only remain
true well within the Rayleigh range. The beam of a single transverse mode (gaussian beam) laser
eventually diverges at an angle which varies inversely with the beam diameter, as required
by diffraction theory. Thus, the "pencil beam" directly generated by a common heliumneon
laser would spread out to a size of perhaps 500 kilometers when shone on the Moon (from the
distance of the earth). On the other hand, the light from a semiconductor laser typically exits the tiny
crystal with a large divergence: up to 50. However even such a divergent beam can be transformed
into a similarly collimated beam by means of a lens system, as is always included, for instance, in
alaser pointer whose light originates from a laser diode. That is possible due to the light being of a
single spatial mode. This unique property of laser light, spatial coherence, cannot be replicated using
standard light sources (except by discarding most of the light) as can be appreciated by comparing
the beam from a flashlight (torch) or spotlight to that of almost any laser.
Quantum vs. classical emission processes
The mechanism of producing radiation in a laser relies on stimulated emission, where energy is
extracted from a transition in an atom or molecule. This is a quantum phenomenon discovered
by Einstein who derived the relationship between the A coefficient describing spontaneous emission
and the B coefficient which applies to absorption and stimulated emission. However, in the case of
the free electron laser, atomic energy levels are not involved; it appears that the operation of this
rather exotic device can be explained without reference to quantum mechanics.

Continuous and pulsed modes of operation

Lidar measurements of lunar topography made by Clementinemission.

Laserlink point to point optical wireless network

Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) of the MESSENGERspacecraft

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 andvibronic
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).
Q-switching
Main article: Q-switching
In a Q-switched laser, the population inversion is allowed to build up by introducing loss inside the
resonator which exceeds the gain of the medium; this can also be described as a reduction of the
quality factor or 'Q' of the cavity. Then, after the pump energy stored in the laser medium has
approached the maximum possible level, the introduced loss mechanism (often an electro- or
acousto-optical element) is rapidly removed (or that occurs by itself in a passive device), allowing
lasing to begin which rapidly obtains the stored energy in the gain medium. This results in a short
pulse incorporating that energy, and thus a high peak power.
Mode-locking
Main article: Mode-locking
A mode-locked laser is capable of emitting extremely short pulses on the order of tens
of picoseconds down to less than 10 femtoseconds. These pulses will repeat at the round trip time,
that is, the time that it takes light to complete one round trip between the mirrors comprising the
resonator. Due to the Fourier limit (also known as energy-timeuncertainty), a pulse of such short
temporal length has a spectrum spread over a considerable bandwidth. Thus such a gain medium
must have a gain bandwidth sufficiently broad to amplify those frequencies. An example of a suitable
material is titanium-doped, artificially grown sapphire (Ti:sapphire) which has a very wide gain
bandwidth and can thus produce pulses of only a few femtoseconds duration.
Such mode-locked lasers are a most versatile tool for researching processes occurring on extremely
short time scales (known as femtosecond physics, femtosecond chemistry andultrafast science), for
maximizing the effect of nonlinearity in optical materials (e.g. in second-harmonic
generation, parametric down-conversion, optical parametric oscillators and the like) due to the large
peak power, and in ablation applications.[citation needed] Again, because of the extremely short pulse
duration, such a laser will produce pulses which achieve an extremely high peak power.
Pulsed pumping
Another method of achieving pulsed laser operation is to pump the laser material with a source that
is itself pulsed, either through electronic charging in the case of flash lamps, or another laser which
is already pulsed. Pulsed pumping was historically used with dye lasers where the inverted
population lifetime of a dye molecule was so short that a high energy, fast pump was needed. The
way to overcome this problem was to charge up large capacitors which are then switched to
discharge through flashlamps, producing an intense flash. Pulsed pumping is also required for three-
level lasers in which the lower energy level rapidly becomes highly populated preventing further
lasing until those atoms relax to the ground state. These lasers, such as the excimer laser and the
copper vapor laser, can never be operated in CW mode.

History
Foundations
In 1917, Albert Einstein established the theoretical foundations for the laser and the maser in the
paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation) via a re-derivation
of Max Planck's law of radiation, conceptually based upon probability coefficients (Einstein
coefficients) for the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic
radiation.[12] In 1928, Rudolf W. Ladenburg confirmed the existence of the phenomena of stimulated
emission and negative absorption.[13]In 1939, Valentin A. Fabrikant predicted the use of stimulated
emission to amplify "short" waves.[14] In 1947, Willis E. Lamb and R. C. Retherford found apparent
stimulated emission in hydrogen spectra and effected the first demonstration of stimulated
emission.[13] 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.[15]
Maser
Main article: Maser
Aleksandr Prokhorov

In 1951, Joseph Weber submitted a paper on using stimulated emissions to make a microwave
amplifier to the June 1952 Institute of Radio Engineers Vacuum Tube Research Conference
at Ottawa.[16] After this presentation, RCA asked Weber to give a seminar on this idea, andCharles
Hard Townes asked him for a copy of the paper.[17]
In 1953, Charles Hard Townes and graduate students James P. Gordon and Herbert J. Zeiger
produced the first microwave amplifier, a device operating on similar principles to the laser, but
amplifying microwave radiation rather than infrared or visible radiation. Townes's maser was
incapable of continuous output.[citation needed] Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, Nikolay
Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov were independently working on the quantum oscillator and solved
the problem of continuous-output systems by using more than two energy levels. These gain media
could release stimulated emissions between an excited state and a lower excited state, not the
ground state, facilitating the maintenance of a population inversion. In 1955, Prokhorov and Basov
suggested optical pumping of a multi-level system as a method for obtaining the population
inversion, later a main method of laser pumping.
Townes reports that several eminent physicistsamong them Niels Bohr, John von Neumann,
and Llewellyn Thomasargued the maser violated Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and hence
could not work. Others such as Isidor Rabi and Polykarp Kusch expected that it would be impractical
and not worth the effort.[18] In 1964 Charles H. Townes, Nikolay Basov, and Aleksandr Prokhorov
shared the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which
has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maserlaser principle".
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 infraredradiation 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.
LASER notebook: First page of the notebook wherein Gordon Gouldcoined the LASER acronym, and described the
elements for constructing the device.

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 Prokhorov's publications and Gould's 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][6] Gould's 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 radio-frequency-emitting devices.
Gould's 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. The question of just how to assign credit for
inventing the laser remains unresolved by historians.[19]
On May 16, 1960, Theodore H. Maiman operated the first functioning laser [20][21] at Hughes Research
Laboratories, Malibu, California, ahead of several research teams, including those of Townes,
at Columbia University, Arthur Schawlow, at Bell Labs,[22] and Gould, at the TRG (Technical
Research Group) company. Maiman's functional laser used a solid-state flashlamp-pumped
synthetic ruby crystal to produce red laser light, at 694 nanometers wavelength; however, the device
only was capable of pulsed operation, because of its three-level pumping design scheme. Later that
year, 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 that year, 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 room-
temperature, continual-operation diode lasers, using the heterojunction structure.
Recent innovations

Graph showing the history of maximum laser pulse intensity throughout the past 40 years.

Since the early period of laser history, laser research has produced a variety of improved and
specialized laser types, optimized for different performance goals, including:

new wavelength bands

maximum average output power
maximum peak pulse energy
maximum peak pulse power
minimum output pulse duration
maximum power efficiency
minimum cost
and this research continues to this day.
Lasing without maintaining the medium excited into a population inversion[dubious discuss] was discovered
in 1992 in sodium gas and again in 1995 in rubidium gas by various international teams.[citation
needed]
This was accomplished by using an external maser to induce "optical transparency" in the
medium by introducing and destructively interfering the ground electron transitions between two
paths, so that the likelihood for the ground electrons to absorb any energy has been cancelled.

Types and operating principles

For a more complete list of laser types see this list of laser types.
 Wavelengths of commercially available lasers. Laser types with distinct laser lines are shown above the
wavelength bar, while below are shown lasers that can emit in a wavelength range. The color codifies the
type of laser material (see the figure description for more details).

Gas lasers
Main article: Gas laser
Following the invention of the HeNe gas laser, many other gas discharges have been found to
amplify light coherently. Gas lasers using many different gases have been built and used for
many purposes. The heliumneon laser (HeNe) is able to operate at a number of different
wavelengths, however the vast majority are engineered to lase at 633 nm; these relatively low
cost but highly coherent lasers are extremely common in optical research and educational
laboratories. Commercial carbon dioxide (CO2) lasers can emit many hundreds of watts in a
single spatial mode which can be concentrated into a tiny spot. This emission is in the thermal
infrared at 10.6 m; such lasers are regularly used in industry for cutting and welding. The
efficiency of a CO2 laser is unusually high: over 30%.[23] Argon-ion lasers can operate at a
number of lasing transitions between 351 and 528.7 nm. Depending on the optical design one or
more of these transitions can be lasing simultaneously; 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, often home-built by hobbyists, which produces
rather incoherent UV light at 337.1 nm.[24] 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. Like all low-pressure gas lasers, the gain media of these lasers have quite narrow
oscillation linewidths, less than 3 GHz (0.5picometers),[25] making them candidates for use
in fluorescence suppressed Raman spectroscopy.
Chemical lasers
Chemical lasers are powered by a chemical reaction permitting a large amount of energy to be
released quickly. Such very high power lasers are especially of interest to the military, however
continuous wave chemical lasers at very high power levels, fed by streams of gasses, have
been developed and have some industrial applications. As examples, in the hydrogen fluoride
laser (27002900 nm) and the deuterium fluoride laser (3800 nm) the reaction is the
combination of hydrogen or deuterium gas with combustion products of ethylene in nitrogen
trifluoride.
Excimer lasers
Excimer lasers are a special sort of gas laser powered by an electric discharge in which the
lasing medium is an excimer, or more precisely an exciplex in existing designs. These are
molecules which can only exist with one atom in an excited electronic state. Once the molecule
transfers its excitation energy to a photon, therefore, its atoms are no longer bound to each
other and the molecule disintegrates. This drastically reduces the population of the lower energy
state thus greatly facilitating a population inversion. Excimers currently used are all noble gas
compounds; noble gasses are chemically inert and can only form compounds while in an excited
state. Excimer lasers typically operate atultraviolet wavelengths with major applications including
semiconductor photolithography and LASIK eye surgery. Commonly used excimer molecules
include ArF (emission at 193 nm), KrCl (222 nm), KrF (248 nm), XeCl (308 nm), and XeF
(351 nm).[26] The molecular fluorine laser, emitting at 157 nm in the vacuum ultraviolet is
sometimes referred to as an excimer laser, however this appears to be a misnomer inasmuch as
F2 is a stable compound.
Solid-state lasers

A 50 W FASOR, based on a Nd:YAG laser, used at the Starfire Optical Range.

Solid-state lasers use a crystalline or glass rod which is "doped" with ions that provide the
required energy states. For example, the first working laser was a ruby laser, made
from ruby (chromium-doped corundum). The population inversion is actually maintained in the
dopant. These materials are pumped optically using a shorter wavelength than the lasing
wavelength, often from a flashtube or from another laser. The usage of the term "solid-state" in
laser physics is narrower than in typical use. Semiconductor lasers (laser diodes) are
typically not referred to as solid-state lasers.
Neodymium is a common dopant in various solid-state laser crystals, including yttrium
orthovanadate (Nd:YVO4), yttrium lithium fluoride(Nd:YLF) and yttrium aluminium
garnet (Nd:YAG). All these lasers can produce high powers in the infrared spectrum at 1064 nm.
They are used for cutting, welding and marking of metals and other materials, and also
in spectroscopy and for pumping dye lasers. These lasers are also commonly frequency
doubled, tripled or quadrupled to produce 532 nm (green, visible), 355 nm and 266 nm (UV)
beams, respectively. Frequency-doubled diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers are used to
make bright green laser pointers.
Ytterbium, holmium, thulium, and erbium are other common "dopants" in solid-state lasers.
Ytterbium is used in crystals such as Yb:YAG, Yb:KGW, Yb:KYW, Yb:SYS, Yb:BOYS, Yb:CaF2,
typically operating around 10201050 nm. They are potentially very efficient and high powered
due to a small quantum defect. Extremely high powers in ultrashort pulses can be achieved with
Yb:YAG. Holmium-doped YAG crystals emit at 2097 nm and form an efficient laser operating
at infrared wavelengths strongly absorbed by water-bearing tissues. The Ho-YAG is usually
operated in a pulsed mode, and passed through optical fiber surgical devices to resurface joints,
remove rot from teeth, vaporize cancers, and pulverize kidney and gall stones.
Titanium-doped sapphire (Ti:sapphire) produces a highly tunable infrared laser, commonly used
for spectroscopy. It is also notable for use as a mode-locked laser producing ultrashort pulses of
extremely high peak power.
Thermal limitations in solid-state lasers arise from unconverted pump power that heats the
medium. This heat, when coupled with a high thermo-optic coefficient (dn/dT) can cause thermal
lensing and reduce the quantum efficiency. Diode-pumped thin disk lasers overcome these
issues by having a gain medium that is much thinner than the diameter of the pump beam. This
allows for a more uniform temperature in the material. Thin disk lasers have been shown to
produce beams of up to one kilowatt.[27]
Fiber lasers
Main article: Fiber laser
Solid-state lasers or laser amplifiers where the light is guided due to the total internal
reflection in a single mode optical fiber are instead called fiber lasers. Guiding of light allows
extremely long gain regions providing good cooling conditions; fibers have high surface area to
volume ratio which allows efficient cooling. In addition, the fiber's waveguiding properties tend to
reduce thermal distortion of the beam. Erbium and ytterbium ions are common active species in
such lasers.
Quite often, the fiber laser is designed as a double-clad fiber. This type of fiber consists of a fiber
core, an inner cladding and an outer cladding. The index of the three concentric layers is chosen
so that the fiber core acts as a single-mode fiber for the laser emission while the outer cladding
acts as a highly multimode core for the pump laser. This lets the pump propagate a large
amount of power into and through the active inner core region, while still having a high numerical
aperture (NA) to have easy launching conditions.
Pump light can be used more efficiently by creating a fiber disk laser, or a stack of such lasers.
Fiber lasers have a fundamental limit in that the intensity of the light in the fiber cannot be so
high that optical nonlinearities induced by the local electric field strength can become dominant
and prevent laser operation and/or lead to the material destruction of the fiber. This effect is
called photodarkening. In bulk laser materials, the cooling is not so efficient, and it is difficult to
separate the effects of photodarkening from the thermal effects, but the experiments in fibers
show that the photodarkening can be attributed to the formation of long-living color centers.[citation
needed]

Photonic crystal lasers

Photonic crystal lasers are lasers based on nano-structures that provide the mode confinement
and the density of optical states (DOS) structure required for the feedback to take place.[clarification
needed]
They are typical micrometer-sized[dubious discuss] and tunable on the bands of the photonic
crystals.[28][clarification needed]
Semiconductor lasers
 A 5.6 mm 'closed can' commercial laser diode, probably from a CD or DVD player

Semiconductor lasers are diodes which are electrically pumped. Recombination of electrons and
holes created by the applied current introduces optical gain. Reflection from the ends of the
crystal form an optical resonator, although the resonator can be external to the semiconductor in
some designs.
Commercial laser diodes emit at wavelengths from 375 nm to 3500 nm.[29] Low to medium power
laser diodes are used in laser pointers,laser printers and CD/DVD players. Laser diodes are also
frequently used to optically pump other lasers with high efficiency. The highest power industrial
laser diodes, with power up to 10 kW (70 dBm)[citation needed], are used in industry for cutting and
welding. External-cavity semiconductor lasers have a semiconductor active medium in a larger
cavity. These devices can generate high power outputs with good beam quality, wavelength-
tunable narrow-linewidth radiation, or ultrashort laser pulses.
In 2012, Nichia and OSRAM developed and manufactured commercial high-power green laser
diodes (515/520 nm), which compete with traditional diode-pumped solid-state lasers.[30][31]
Vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are semiconductor lasers whose emission
direction is perpendicular to the surface of the wafer. VCSEL devices typically have a more
circular output beam than conventional laser diodes. As of 2005, only 850 nm VCSELs are
widely available, with 1300 nm VCSELs beginning to be commercialized,[32] and 1550 nm
devices an area of research. VECSELs are external-cavity VCSELs. Quantum cascade
lasers are semiconductor lasers that have an active transition between energysub-bands of an
electron in a structure containing several quantum wells.
The development of a silicon laser is important in the field of optical computing. Silicon is the
material of choice for integrated circuits, and so electronic and silicon photoniccomponents
(such as optical interconnects) could be fabricated on the same chip. Unfortunately, silicon is a
difficult lasing material to deal with, since it has certain properties which block lasing. However,
recently teams have produced silicon lasers through methods such as fabricating the lasing
material from silicon and other semiconductor materials, such as indium(III)
phosphide or gallium(III) arsenide, materials which allow coherent light to be produced from
silicon. These are called hybrid silicon laser. Another type is aRaman laser, which takes
advantage of Raman scattering to produce a laser from materials such as silicon.
Dye lasers
 Close-up of a table-top dye laser based on Rhodamine 6G

Dye lasers use an organic dye as the gain medium. The wide gain spectrum of available dyes,
or mixtures of dyes, allows these lasers to be highly tunable, or to produce very short-duration
pulses (on the order of a few femtoseconds). Although these tunable lasers are mainly known in
their liquid form, researchers have also demonstrated narrow-linewidth tunable emission in
dispersive oscillator configurations incorporating solid-state dye gain media.[33] In their most
prevalent form these solid state dye lasers use dye-doped polymers as laser media.
Free-electron lasers

The free-electron laser FELIX at the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen, Nieuwegein

Free-electron lasers, or FELs, generate coherent, high power radiation that is widely tunable,
currently ranging in wavelength from microwaves through terahertz radiation and infrared to the
visible spectrum, to soft X-rays. They have the widest frequency range of any laser type. While
FEL beams share the same optical traits as other lasers, such as coherent radiation, FEL
operation is quite different. Unlike gas, liquid, or solid-state lasers, which rely on bound atomic or
molecular states, FELs use a relativistic electron beam as the lasing medium, hence the
term free-electron.
Exotic media
The pursuit of a high-quantum-energy laser using transitions between isomeric states of
an atomic nucleus has been the subject of wide-ranging academic research since the early
1970s. Much of this is summarized in three review articles.[34][35][36] This research has been
international in scope, but mainly based in the former Soviet Union and the United States. While
many scientists remain optimistic that a breakthrough is near, an operational gamma-ray laser is
yet to be realized.[37]
Some of the early studies were directed toward short pulses of neutrons exciting the upper
isomer state in a solid so the gamma-ray transition could benefit from the line-narrowing
of Mssbauer effect.[38][39] In conjunction, several advantages were expected from two-stage
pumping of a three-level system.[40] It was conjectured that the nucleus of an atom, embedded in
the near field of a laser-driven coherently-oscillating electron cloud would experience a larger
dipole field than that of the driving laser.[41][42] Furthermore, nonlinearity of the oscillating cloud
would produce both spatial and temporal harmonics, so nuclear transitions of higher multipolarity
could also be driven at multiples of the laser frequency.[43][44][45][46][47][48][49]
In September 2007, the BBC News reported that there was speculation about the possibility of
using positronium annihilation to drive a very powerful gamma ray laser.[50] Dr. David Cassidy of
the University of California, Riverside proposed that a single such laser could be used to ignite
a nuclear fusion reaction, replacing the banks of hundreds of lasers currently employed
in inertial confinement fusion experiments.[50]
Space-based X-ray lasers pumped by a nuclear explosion have also been proposed as
antimissile weapons.[51][52] Such devices would be one-shot weapons.
Living cells have been used to produce laser light.[53][54] The cells were genetically engineered to
produce green fluorescent protein (GFP). The GFP is used as the laser's "gain medium", where
light amplification takes place. The cells were then placed between two tiny mirrors, just 20
millionths of a meter across, which acted as the "laser cavity" in which light could bounce many
times through the cell. Upon bathing the cell with blue light, it could be seen to emit directed and
intense green laser light.

Uses

Lasers range in size from microscopic diode lasers (top) with numerous applications, to football field
sized neodymium glass lasers (bottom) used for inertial confinement fusion, nuclear weapons research and
other high energy density physics experiments.

Main article: List of applications for lasers

When lasers were invented in 1960, they were called "a solution looking for a problem".[55] Since
then, they have become ubiquitous, finding utility in thousands of highly varied applications in
every section of modern society, including consumer electronics, information technology,
science, medicine, industry, law enforcement, entertainment, and the military. Fiber-optic
communication using lasers is a key technology in modern communications, allowing services
such as the Internet.
The first use of lasers in the daily lives of the general population was the
supermarket barcode scanner, introduced in 1974. The laserdiscplayer, 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.
Some other uses are:

Medicine: Bloodless surgery, laser healing, surgical treatment, kidney stone treatment, eye
treatment, dentistry.
Industry: Cutting, welding, material heat treatment, marking parts, non-contact measurement
of parts.
Military: Marking targets, guiding munitions, missile defence, electro-optical
countermeasures (EOCM), alternative to radar, blinding troops.
Law enforcement: used for latent fingerprint detection in the forensic identification field[56][57]
Research: Spectroscopy, laser ablation, laser annealing, laser scattering,
laser interferometry, lidar, laser capture microdissection,fluorescence
microscopy, metrology.
Product development/commercial: laser printers, optical discs (e.g. CDs and the
like), barcode scanners, thermometers, laser pointers,holograms, bubblegrams.
Laser lighting displays: Laser light shows.
Cosmetic skin treatments: acne treatment, cellulite and striae reduction, and hair removal.
In 2004, excluding diode lasers, approximately 131,000 lasers were sold with a value of
US$2.19 billion.[58] In the same year, approximately 733 million diode lasers, valued at $3.20
billion, were sold.[59]
Examples by power

Laser application in astronomical adaptive opticsimaging

Different applications need lasers with different output powers. Lasers that produce a continuous
beam or a series of short pulses can be compared on the basis of their average power. Lasers
that produce pulses can also be characterized based on the peak power of each pulse. The
peak power of a pulsed laser is many orders of magnitude greater than its average power. The
average output power is always less than the power consumed.

The continuous or average power required for some uses:

 Power Use

15 mW Laser pointers

5 mW CD-ROM drive

510 mW DVD player or DVD-ROM drive

100 mW High-speed CD-RW burner

250 mW Consumer 16 DVD-R burner

Burning through a jewel case including disc within 4 seconds[60]

400 mW
DVD 24 dual-layer recording.[61]

1 W Green laser in current Holographic Versatile Disc prototype development

Output of the majority of commercially available solid-state lasers used for micro
120 W
machining

30100 W Typical sealed CO2 surgical lasers[62]

1003000
Typical sealed CO2 lasers used in industrial laser cutting
W

Examples of pulsed systems with high peak power:

700 TW (7001012 W) National Ignition Facility, a 192-beam, 1.8-megajoule laser system

adjoining a 10-meter-diameter target chamber.[63]
1.3 PW (1.31015 W) world's most powerful laser as of 1998, located at the Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory[64]
Hobby uses
In recent years, some hobbyists have taken interests in lasers. Lasers used by hobbyists are
generally of class IIIa or IIIb (see Safety), although some have made their own class IV
types.[65] However, compared to other hobbyists, laser hobbyists are far less common, due to the
cost and potential dangers involved. Due to the cost of lasers, some hobbyists use inexpensive
means to obtain lasers, such as salvaging laser diodes from broken DVD players (red), Blu-
ray players (violet), or even higher power laser diodes from CD orDVD burners.[66]
Hobbyists also have been taking surplus pulsed lasers from retired military applications and
modifying them for pulsed holography. Pulsed Ruby and pulsed YAG lasers have been used.
As weapons

The US-Israeli Tactical High Energy weapon has been used to shoot down rockets and artillery shells.

Lasers of all but the lowest powers can potentially be used as incapacitating weapons, through
their ability to produce temporary or permanent vision loss in varying degrees when aimed at the
eyes. The degree, character, and duration of vision impairment caused by eye exposure to laser
light varies with the power of the laser, the wavelength(s), the collimation of the beam, the exact
orientation of the beam, and the duration of exposure. Lasers of even a fraction of a watt in
power can produce immediate, permanent vision loss under certain conditions, making such
lasers potential non-lethal but incapacitating weapons. The extreme handicap that laser-induced
blindness represents makes the use of lasers even as non-lethal weapons morally controversial,
and weapons designed to cause blindness have been banned by the Protocol on Blinding Laser
Weapons. Incidents of pilots being exposed to lasers while flying have prompted aviation
authorities to implement special procedures to deal with such hazards.[67]
Laser weapons capable of directly damaging or destroying a target in combat are still in the
experimental stage. The general idea of laser-beam weaponry is to hit a target with a train of
brief pulses of light. The rapid evaporation and expansion of the surface causes shockwaves
that damage the target.[citation needed] The power needed to project a high-powered laser beam of this
kind is beyond the limit of current mobile power technology, thus favoring chemically
powered gas dynamic lasers. Example experimental systems includeMIRACL and the Tactical
High Energy Laser.

Boeing YAL-1. The laser system is mounted in a turret attached to the aircraft nose
Throughout the 2000s, the United States Air Force worked on the Boeing YAL-1, an airborne
laser mounted in a Boeing 747. It was intended to be used to shoot down incoming ballistic
missiles over enemy territory. In March 2009, Northrop Grumman claimed that its engineers
in Redondo Beach had successfully built and tested an electrically powered solid state laser
capable of producing a 100-kilowatt beam, powerful enough to destroy an airplane. According to
Brian Strickland, manager for the United States Army's Joint High Power Solid State Laser
program, an electrically powered laser is capable of being mounted in an aircraft, ship, or other
vehicle because it requires much less space for its supporting equipment than a chemical
laser.[68] However, the source of such a large electrical power in a mobile application remained
unclear. Ultimately, the project was deemed to be infeasible,[69][70][71] and was cancelled in
December 2011,[72] with the Boeing YAL-1 prototype being stored and eventually dismantled.
The United States Navy is developing a laser weapon referred to as the Laser Weapon
System or LaWS.[73]
Telecommunications in space
Main article: Laser communication in space
Recent technology has allowed prototypes for laser communications and visible light
communication in outer space. The communication range of free-space optical communication is
currently of the order of several thousand kilometers,[74] but has the potential to bridge
interplanetary distances of millions of kilometers, using optical telescopes as beam
expanders.[75][76]

Safety

Left: European laser warning symbol required for Class 2 lasers and higher. Right: US laser warning label, in
this case for a Class 3B laser

Main article: Laser safety

Even the first laser was recognized as being potentially dangerous. Theodore
Maiman characterized the first laser as having a power of one "Gillette" as it could burn through
one Gillette razor blade. Today, it is accepted that even low-power lasers with only a few
milliwatts of output power can be hazardous to human eyesight when the beam hits the eye
directly or after reflection from a shiny surface. At wavelengths which the cornea and the lens
can focus well, the coherence and low divergence of laser light means that it can be focused by
the eye into an extremely small spot on the retina, resulting in localized burning and permanent
damage in seconds or even less time.
Lasers are usually labeled with a safety class number, which identifies how dangerous the laser
is:

Class 1 is inherently safe, usually because the light is contained in an enclosure, for example
in CD players.
Class 2 is safe during normal use; the blink reflex of the eye will prevent damage. Usually up
to 1 mW power, for example laser pointers.
Class 3R (formerly IIIa) lasers are usually up to 5 mW and involve a small risk of eye
damage within the time of the blink reflex. Staring into such a beam for several seconds is
likely to cause damage to a spot on the retina.
Class 3B can cause immediate eye damage upon exposure.
Class 4 lasers can burn skin, and in some cases, even scattered light can cause eye and/or
skin damage. Many industrial and scientific lasers are in this class.
The indicated powers are for visible-light, continuous-wave lasers. For pulsed lasers and
invisible wavelengths, other power limits apply. People working with class 3B and class 4 lasers
can protect their eyes with safety goggles which are designed to absorb light of a particular
wavelength.
Infrared lasers with wavelengths longer than about 1.4 micrometers are often referred to as
"eye-safe", because the cornea tends to absorb light at these wavelengths, protecting the retina
from damage. The label "eye-safe" can be misleading, however, as it applies only to relatively
low power continuous wave beams; a high power or Q-switched laser at these wavelengths can
burn the cornea, causing severe eye damage, and even moderate power lasers can injure the
eye.