Search results
Laser. A telescope in the Very Large Telescope system producing four orange laser guide stars. 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 anacronym that originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission ...
Oct 22, 2024 · Laser is an acronym for “light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation.”. Laser, a device that stimulates atoms or molecules to emit light at particular wavelengths and amplifies that light, typically producing a very narrow beam of radiation. The emission generally covers an extremely limited range of visible, infrared, or ...
By ScienceAlert Staff. Laser light being guided by a lens. (Chris Rogers/Getty Images) Lasers are devices that concentrate beams of light by forcing their waveforms and frequencies to align. First developed in the 1960s to amplify microwaves, modern lasers technology can ramp up light rays in just about any part of the electromagnetic spectrum ...
- Spontaneous emission is a random process, whereas stimulated emission produces photons with identical properties. Einstein predicted that excited atoms also could convert stored energy into light by a process called stimulated emission.
- In the prototypical gas laser, the gain medium has a long, thin cylindrical shape. The cavity is defined by two mirrors. One is partially reflecting and allows the output beam to escape.
- Laser light differs from conventional light in that all the lightwaves are in phase with each other. Brightness (or, more correctly, radiance)— The most strikingly visible difference between lasers and conventional light sources is that all the emitted light travels in the same direction as an intense beam.
- A resonant cavity supports only modes that meet the resonance condition, Nλ = 2 × cavity length. The output of a CW laser is defined by the overlap of the gain bandwidth and these resonant cavity modes.
- How A Laser Works
- Types of Lasers
- Specifically Designed Lasers
- Laser Sources in A Wider Sense
- Safety Aspects
- Laser Applications
- More to Learn
Basic Principle of Operation
The basic operation principle of lasers can be well understood by considering how lightcould be “stored” (maintained) over extended times: First, we need to somehow spatially confine lightsuch that it cannot escape our apparatus: 1. The simplest approach would be using two plane mirrors, reflecting light between each other: 1. However, the natural tendency of a light beam to divergealso needs to be counteracted. That can simply be done by using a concave curvature of at least one of the mirro...
Directed Emission and Spatial Coherence of Laser Radiation
A high degree of spatial coherence of the laser radiation can be achieved – essentially because the light emission is triggered (stimulated) by the intracavity radiation (i.e., the light circulating in the laser resonator) itself, rather than occurring spontaneously in an uncoordinated fashion. In the stimulated emission process, the laser-active ions are made to emit light in the direction of already existing light, and also with the same optical phase. In effect, the circulating laser light...
Emission Wavelengths, Temporal Coherence
Temporal coherence is a different issue, and it has completely different origins. It is related to the optical bandwidthof laser emission (although generally in a non-trivial way). Most types of lasers can work only with a very restricted choice of emission wavelengths, if not with one emission wavelength only. However, different types can overall cover a very wide range of emission wavelengths from the far light to the ultraviolet light. Some laser gain media can amplify light only in a narr...
Laser technology is a rather diverse field, utilizing a wide range of very different kinds of laser gain media, optical elements and techniques. Common types of lasers are: 1. Semiconductor lasers (mostly laser diodes), electrically (or sometimes optically) pumped, efficiently generating very high output powers (but typically with poor beam quality...
Some types of lasers can be specifically be design to achieve high performance in a certain sense. Some examples: 1. High-power lasers are optimized for a particularly high output power. Only few laser architectures are suitable for the concept of power scaling of lasers, while many others can at least to some extent be optimized for higher powers ...
There are some light sources which are not strictly lasers, but are nevertheless often called laser sources: 1. In some cases, the term is used for amplifying devices emitting light without an input (excluding seeded amplifiers). An example are X-ray lasers, which are usually superluminescent sources, based on spontaneous emission followed by singl...
The work with lasers can raise serious safety issues. Some of those are directly related to the laser light, in particular to the high optical intensitiesachievable, but there are also various other hazards related to laser sources. See the article on laser safetyfor details.
There is an enormously wide range of applications for a great variety of different laser devices. They are largely based on various special properties of laser light, many of which cannot be achieved with any other kind of light sources. Particularly important application areas are laser material processing, optical data transmission and storage an...
Encyclopedia articles: 1. laser light 2. laser optics 3. laser applications 4. laser physics 5. laser design
Nov 8, 2024 · The letters in the word laser stand for L ight A mplification by S timulated E mission of R adiation. A laser is an unusual light source. It is quite different from a light bulb or a flash light. Lasers produce a very narrow beam of light. This type of light is useful for lots of technologies and instruments—even some that you might use at home!
People also ask
What is a laser light source?
What are lasers based on?
What are the different types of light sources?
What type of light does a laser produce?
What is a laser based device?
How does a laser work?
1. A basic laser, like this red ruby laser, consists of a rod made of ruby crystals with a mirror on each end, and a flash tube. 2. A burst of light from the flash tube adds energy inside the rod, exciting the ruby atoms and producing light particles called photons. 3.
