MODULE 3:

FUNDAMENTALS OF LASER
Syllabus
Introduction
• Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

• Laser beam has the following remarkable properties:

o Nearly monochromatic

o Coherent, i.e., all the emitted waves are exactly in phase with one another

o Hardly diverges

o Extremely intense
Characteristics/Properties of Laser
• Laser light has four unique characteristics that differentiate it from ordinary light:

❖ Coherence
1. Coherence
❖ Directionality

❖ Monochromatic

❖ High intensity

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Continued…
2. Directionality 3. Monochromatic
In laser, almost all the emitted photons have the same
energy, frequency, or wavelength. Hence, the light waves
of laser nearly have a single wavelength.

4. High Intensity
In laser, the light spreads in small region of space and in a
small wavelength range. Hence, laser light has greater
intensity when compared to the ordinary light.

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Absorption and Emission of Radiation

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The Einstein relations
• In 1917, Einstein demonstrated that the rates of the three transition processes of
absorption, spontaneous emission and stimulated emission were related mathematically.

• The upward transition rate R12 is given by

• The total transition rate R21 is given by

spontaneous emission rate stimulated emission rate

where N1 and N2 represent the density of atoms in energy levels E1 and E2, respectively,
with g1 and g2 being the corresponding degeneracies of the levels, B12 is known as the
Einstein coefficient of absorption, ρf is the spectral density of the radiation energy at the
transition frequency f, A21 & B21 are the Einstein coefficient of spontaneous emission and
stimulated emission. 8
Continued…
Further solving, we will get

The ratio of the stimulated emission rate to the spontaneous emission rate is given by

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Example #1:
Calculate the ratio of the stimulated emission rate to the spontaneous emission rate for an
incandescent lamp operating at a temperature of 1000 K. It may be assumed that the average
operating wavelength is 0.5 μm.

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Metastable State
• It is an excited state of an atom with a longer lifetime than the other excited states.

• Metastable can be readily obtained in a crystal system containing impurity atoms.

• These levels lie in the forbidden gap of the host crystal.

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Population Inversion
• Population Inversion creates a situation in which the number of atoms in higher energy state
is more than that in the lower energy state.

negative temperature states

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Requisites of a LASER system
• The essential components of a laser are

An active medium to support population inversion.

Pumping mechanism to excite the atoms to higher energy levels.

An optical cavity or optical resonator

• Active Medium
• It is the material medium composed of atoms or ions or molecules in which the laser action is made to
take place, which can be a solid or liquid or even a gas.

• Only a few atoms or electrons of the medium are responsible for stimulated emission.

• They are called active centers and the remaining medium simply supports the active centers.
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Pumping
• The process to achieve the population inversion is called Pumping action.

• The methods commonly used for pumping action are:

1. Optical pumping (Excitation by Photons): solid state lasers such as Ruby laser or
Nd:YAG laser

2. Electrical discharge method (Excitation by electrons): gas lasers like CO2 laser

elastic atom – atom collision

3. Direct conversion: semiconductor laser like GaAs laser

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Three level LASER system

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Four level LASER system

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Optical Resonator
• Continuation of the stimulated emission process
effectively creates avalanche multiplication & thus
amplified coherent emission can be obtained.

Figure: Various types/configurations of resonator

• Concentric resonator: spherical mirrors and co-incident centers of curvature

• Confocal resonator: spherical mirrors and co-incident focal points
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Lasers Modes
• Lasers can operate in either a continuous (CW) or a single-pulsed mode

• Pumped (excited) continuously → produces CW → o/p power almost constant

• Pumped (excited) by a pulse of energy will emit an output pulse that coincides in time with
the pumping pulse

• In normal pulse mode, the o/p → irregular in peak power, pulse width, and frequency of
occurrence. It depends on the population inversion

• These irregularities can be removed and the peak power greatly increased by using a
technique called Q-switching

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 Continued…
Q-Switching
• In this mode, energy is stored in the laser material during pumping in the form of atoms in
the upper laser level and suddenly released in a single, short burst.

• It involves switching the reflectivity of the output mirror from a high to a low value at a
time when the active medium has been pumped to a highly excited state.

• It is essentially a shutter placed between the active medium and the (low reflecting) LR
mirror.

• When the amplifier gain reaches a predetermined value, the shutter is opened to increase
the cavity quality.

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 Continued…
Q-Switching
The factor Q in a laser cavity consisting of a 100% reflecting mirror and a mirror with
reflectivity R is given by:

where D is the distance between the mirrors, ω is the angular frequency of the light produced

from stimulated emission, and c is the speed of light.

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 Continued…
Mode Locking
• It is a technique for producing high-power pulses & very similar to Q-switching technique.

• One can think of the intracavity mode locking device as a gate.

• The gate opens just as a packet of photons (synchronous spatial mode) approach it, and it stays open
just long enough for these photons to pass through the gate, reflect off the HR mirror, and pass
through the gate going in the opposite direction.

• After this packet of photons has cleared the gate, the gate closes and blocks all other photons from
getting to the HR mirror.

• The gate stays closed until that packet of photons reflects off the output coupler mirror and returns to
the gate (completing a round-trip of the laser cavity). The gate then opens again, and the cycle
repeats itself.

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 Continued…
Frequency doubling
• Frequency doubling, also known as second-harmonic generation (SHG), is a powerful
technique used to change the wavelength of a laser to a shorter wavelength.

• Imagine starting with a laser emitting light at a fundamental frequency (e.g., 1064 nm for
Nd:YAG lasers).

• In frequency doubling: The laser beam passes through a nonlinear crystal (such as potassium
titanyl phosphate, KTP). Inside the crystal, two photons interact and combine to generate a
new photon with twice the energy (and half the wavelength) of the original photons.

• The conservation of energy is a fundamental principle in this process.

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 Continued…
Frequency doubling
• The energy of the new photon is equal to the sum of the energies of the two original photons.

• This new photon has a doubled frequency (e.g., 532 nm for Nd:YAG lasers).

Figure: Experimental arrangement for second harmonic generation

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Classes of Lasers
When evaluating laser radiation danger, the laser sources are divided into 4 classes:

Class 1: The power density of these lasers is so small that their radiation is not dangerous to skin or
to the eyes

Class 2: CW lasers emitting visible light with power < 1 mW fall into this class. Direct exposure to
such laser radiation is considered not dangerous if the exposure time does not exceed 0.25 s

Class 3:

• 3R class includes lasers whose power in the visible range is < 5 mW. These can cause temporary
vision disorder.

• 3B class includes CW lasers emitting in the entire optical range, whose power is < 0.5 W and
pulsed lasers emitting in the visible range, whose pulse energy is < 30 mJ. Direct exposure to such
laser radiation is dangerous to skin and eyes.
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 Continued…

• Class 4: It is the most dangerous class. All the lasers whose power or pulse energy is
greater than 3B subclass lasers fall into this class.
• All ultrashort pulse (picosecond and femtosecond) lasers also fall into this class.

• Both direct and scattered (reflected from matted or diffuse surfaces e.g., sheet of paper) radiation as well
as reflections from optical or mechanical element surfaces (lenses, filters, mounts, etc.) is dangerous to
skin and eyes.

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Solid (Crystal) Laser: Ruby Laser

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 Continued…

Advantages of Ruby Lasers

• Beam diameter of the ruby laser is comparatively less than CO2 gas lasers.
• Output power of Ruby laser is not as less as in He-Ne gas lasers.
• Since the ruby is in solid form therefore there is no chance of wasting material
of active medium.

Disadvantages of Ruby Lasers

• Low output power.
• Efficiency of ruby laser is comparatively low.

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Gas Laser: He-Ne Laser

Construction:
(i) Active medium: Ne atoms act as active centres and responsible for the laser action, while He
atoms are used to help in the excitation process
(ii) Optical resonator
(iii) Pumping system
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Working of He-Ne Laser
1. An electric discharge is produced in the gas by
means of electrodes, resulting into excited He
& Ne atoms
2. Some of the excited He atoms transfer their
energy to Ne atoms in collisions, with
additional energy being provided by the kinetic
energy of the atoms.

3. The purpose of the He atoms is thus to help achieve a population inversion in the Ne atoms.
4. Since the electron impacts that excite the He and Ne atoms occur all the time, a He-Ne laser
operates continuously.
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 Continued…
Advantages of He-Ne Lasers
• Can produce three wavelengths that are 1.152μm, 3.391 μm and 632.8nm, in
which the 632.8nm is most common & is used in bar-code scanners.
• Cost of He-Ne laser is less from most of other lasers.
• Construction of He-Ne laser is also not very complex.
• He-Ne laser provide inherent safety due to low power output.

Disadvantages of He-Ne Lasers

• Low output power.
• High voltage requirement can be considered its disadvantage.
• Escaping of gas from laser plasma tube is also its disadvantage
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Semiconductor Laser
• The first semiconductor lasers were based on
simple p-n junction and operated only at cryogenic
temperature

• Here, the radiation is produced by stimulated

electron-hole recombination due to interband
transitions

• At present, semiconductor lasers provide the output

emission wavelength is in the 750 –
power up to several watts and their emission 880 nm range
wavelengths cover very broad spectral range
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 Continued…

Advantages of Semiconductor Lasers

• Compact Size
• High efficiency
• Economical
• Long life
• Energy efficient

Disadvantages of Semiconductor Lasers

• Limited wavelength range
• Temperature sensitive
• Limited power output

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