LASERS: A Walk Through History: Laser: Fundamentals and Applications

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Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

LASERS: A Walk Through History


Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

Max Planck

• In his most important work, published in 1900, Planck


deduced the relationship between energy and the frequency
of radiation, essentially saying that energy could be emitted
or absorbed only in discrete chunks – which he called quanta.

• In 1905, Einstein released his paper on the photoelectric


effect, which proposed that light also delivers its energy in
chunks, in this case discrete quantum particles now called
photons.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

Albert Einstein

• In 1917, Einstein proposed the process that makes lasers possible,


called stimulated emission. He theorized that, besides absorbing
and emitting light spontaneously, electrons could be stimulated to
emit light of a particular wavelength.

• But it would take nearly 40 years before scientists would be able


to amplify those emissions, proving Einstein correct and putting
up lasers.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

Charles Hard Townes

• April 26, 1951: Charles Hard Townes of Columbia University in New


York conceives his maser idea while sitting on a park bench in
Washington.

• 1954: Working with Herbert J. Zeiger and James P. Gordon, Townes


demonstrates the first maser at Columbia University. The ammonia
maser, the first device based on Einstein’s predictions.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1955: At P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, Nikolai G.


Basov and Alexander M. Prokhorov attempt to design and build
oscillators. They propose a method for the production of a
negative absorption that was called the pumping method.

• 1956: Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard University develops the


microwave solid-state maser.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1958: Townes, and his brother-in-law, Arthur L. Schawlow, in a


joint paper published in Physical Review, show that masers could
be made to operate in the optical and infrared regions and
propose how it could be accomplished.

• At a conference in 1959, Gordon Gould published the term LASER


in the paper The LASER, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission
of Radiation

This is the first page of Gordon


Gould's famous notebook, in
which he coined the acronym
LASER and described the essential
elements for constructing one.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

Finally!!!!
Theodore H. Maiman

• May 16, 1960: Theodore H. Maiman, a physicist, constructs the


first laser using a cylinder of synthetic ruby measuring 1 cm in
diameter and 2 cm long, with the ends silver-coated to make them
reflective and able to serve as a Fabry-Perot resonator. Maiman
uses photographic flash lamps as the laser’s pump source.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

Theodore H. Maiman

Ruby Laser
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• November 1960: Peter P. Sorokin and Mirek J. Stevenson


demonstrate the uranium laser, a four-stage solid-state device.

• December 1960: Ali Javan, William Bennett Jr. and Donald Herriott
develop the helium-neon (HeNe) laser, the first to generate a
continuous beam of light at 1.15 μm.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• March 1961: At the second International Quantum Electronics


meeting, Robert W. Hellwarth presents theoretical work suggesting
that a dramatic improvement in the ruby laser could be made by
making its pulse more predictable and controllable.

• October 1961: Elias Snitzer reports the first operation of a


neodymium glass (Nd:glass) laser.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• December 1961: The first medical treatment using a laser on a


human patient is performed by Dr. Charles J. Campbell and Charles
J. Koester. An Optical ruby laser is used to destroy a retinal tumour.

• 1962: With Fred J. McClung, Hellwarth proves his laser theory,


generating peak powers 100 times that of ordinary ruby lasers by
using electrically switched Kerr cell shutters. The giant pulse
formation technique is dubbed Q-switching. Important first
applications include the welding of springs for watches.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• October 1962: Nick Holonyak Jr, publishes his work on the “visible
red” GaAsP (gallium arsenide phosphide) laser diode, a compact,
efficient source of visible coherent light that is the basis for today’s
red LEDs used in consumer products such as CDs, DVD players and
cell phones.

• June 1962: Bell Labs reports the first yttrium aluminium garnet
(YAG) laser.

• 1963: Logan E. Hargrove, Richard L. Fork and M.A. Pollack report


the first demonstration of a mode-locked laser. Mode locking is
fundamental for laser communication and is the basis for
femtosecond lasers.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1963: Herbert, and the team of Rudolf Kazarinov and Zhores Alferov,
independently propose ideas to build semiconductor lasers from
heterostructure devices. The work leads to Kroemer and Alferov winning
the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics.

• March 1964: William B. Bridges discovers the pulsed argon-ion laser,


which, although bulky and inefficient, could produce output at several
visible and UV wavelengths.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1964: Townes, Basov and Prokhorov are awarded the Nobel Prize
in physics for their “fundamental work in the field of quantum
electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and
amplifiers based on the maser-laser-principle.”

• 1964: The carbon dioxide laser is invented by Kumar Patel at Bell


Labs. The most powerful continuously operating laser of its time, it
is now used worldwide as a cutting tool in surgery and industry.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1964: The Nd:YAG (neodymium-doped YAG) laser is invented by


Joseph E. Geusic and Richard G. Smith. The laser later proves ideal
for cosmetic applications, such as laser-assisted in situ
keratomileusis (lasik) vision correction and skin resurfacing.

• 1965: Two lasers are phase-locked for the first time at Bell Labs, an
important step toward optical communications.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1966: Charles K. Kao, working with George Hockham, makes a discovery that
leads to a breakthrough in fibre optics. He calculates how to transmit light over
long distances via optical glass fibres, deciding that, with a fibre of purest glass,
it would be possible to transmit light signals over a distance of 100 km,
compared with only 20 m for the fibres available in the 1960s. Kao receives a
2009 Nobel Prize in physics for his work.

• 1966: French physicist Alfred Kastler wins the Nobel Prize in physics for his
method of stimulating atoms to higher energy states. The technique, known as
optical pumping, was an important step toward the creation of the maser and
the laser.

• 1966: Sorokin, P. and Lankard, J. - Demonstration of first Dye Laser action at IBM
Labs.

Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1970: Basov, V.A. Danilychev and Yu. M. Popov develop the


excimer laser.

• 1970: Arthur Ashkin invents optical trapping, the process by which


atoms are trapped by laser light. His work pioneers the field of
optical tweezing and trapping and leads to significant advances in
physics and biology.

• 1972: Charles H. Henry invents the quantum well laser, which


requires much less current to reach lasing threshold than
conventional diode laser and which is exceedingly more efficient.
Holonyak and students first demonstrate the quantum well laser in
1977.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• June 26, 1974: A pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum is the first product
read by a bar-code scanner in a grocery store.

• 1976: John M.J. Madey and his group at Stanford University in


California demonstrate the first free-electron laser (FEL).

• 1978: The LaserDisc hits the home video market, with little impact.
The earliest players use HeNe laser tubes to read the media, while
later players use infrared laser diodes.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1982: Peter F. Moulton develops the titanium-sapphire laser, used to


generate short pulses in the picosecond and femtosecond ranges.

• 1985: Steven Chu and his colleagues use laser light to slow and
manipulate atoms. Their laser cooling technique, also called “optical
molasses,” is used to investigate the behaviour of atoms, providing an
insight into quantum mechanics. Chu, Claude N. Cohen-Tannoudji and
William D. Phillips win a Nobel Prize for this work in 1997.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• 1994: The first semiconductor laser that can simultaneously emit


light at multiple widely separated wavelengths – the quantum
cascade (QC) laser – is invented at Bell Labs by Jérôme Faist,
Federico Capasso, Deborah L. Sivco, Carlo Sirtori, Albert L.
Hutchinson and Alfred Y. Cho.

• November 1996: The first pulsed atom laser, which uses matter
instead of light, is demonstrated at MIT by Wolfgang Ketterle.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• September 2003: A team of researchers from NASA’s Marshall


Space Flight Centre, from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Centre
and from the University of Alabama successfully flies the first laser-
powered aircraft.

• 2004: Electronic switching in a Raman laser is demonstrated for the


first time by Ozdal Boyraz and Bahram Jalali . The first silicon
Raman laser operates at room temperature with 2.5-W peak
output power.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• September 2006: John Bowers and colleagues and Mario Paniccia,


announce that they have built the first electrically powered hybrid
silicon laser using standard silicon manufacturing processes.

• August 2007: Bowers and his doctoral student Brian Koch announce
that they have built the first mode-locked silicon evanescent laser,
providing a new way to integrate optical and electronic functions on
a single chip and enabling new types of integrated circuits.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• May 29, 2009: The largest and highest-energy laser in the world,
the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory is dedicated. In a few weeks, the system begins firing all
192 of its laser beams onto targets.

• June 2009: NASA launches the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).


The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on the LRO will use a laser to
gather data about the high and low points on the moon.
Laser : Fundamentals and Applications

• March 31, 2010: Rainer Blatt and Piet O. Schmidt and their team at
the University of Innsbruck in Austria demonstrate a single-atom
laser with and without threshold behavior by tuning the strength
of atom/light field coupling

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