6/23/2018

Types of lasers
By active media
Solid state laser - crystal, or glass, doped with impurities, e.g. ruby laser, Ti: sapphire
laser, semiconductor laser.
Gas laser - e.g. He-Ne laser, Ar+ laser, CO2 laser, N2 laser, HCN laser.
Dye laser - active medium: dye molecules in liquid solvent.
Optical Sources : LASERs Types By mode of operation
 CW
A PPLI E D O PTO E LEC T RO N I C S  Pulsed
EEE-436
By pumping and laser levels
E LEC T R I C A L E N G I N E E R I N G D E PA RT M E N T, C I I T A B B OT TA BA D
 3-level laser
 4-level laser

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Solid State Lasers Properties Solid State: Ruby Laser

Solid state lasers use high density solid media as active laser It was the first working laser, and was demonstrated by Ted Maiman in Research
materials. Laboratories on 1960.

Ions of transition elements, particularly rare earth elements (Nd, Yb, To produce laser from solid, Ruby crystal is used.
Er, Ho etc.) or transition metals (Cr, Ti etc.) are used most commonly Ruby is an aluminum oxide crystal (Al2O3) in which some of the aluminum atoms
as dopants. have been replaced with dopants Cr3+ chromium atoms (0.05% by weight).

Host materials include crystals like sapphire (Al2O3), YAG (Y3Al5O12),
as well as glasses from silicate (SiO2) and phosphate (P2O5) classes.
Chromium gives ruby its characteristic pink or red color by absorbing green and
blue light.
Pumping is done with flash lamps and laser operates in pulsed regime.
The ruby laser is used as a pulsed laser, producing red light at 694 nm.

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 6/23/2018

Solid State: Ruby Laser Solid State: Ruby Laser

Ruby crystal is surrounded by xenon tube.
Ruby crystal is fully silvered at one side and partially silvered at the other end.
A strong beam of blue green light is made to fall up on crystal from xenon tube
and this light is absorbed by the crystal.
Because of this, many electrons from ground state or normal state are raised to
the excited state or higher state and electron falls to metastable state.
As electron drops to metastable state they remain there for certain time ~ 10-6 s.
 Thus population inversion can be achieved.

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Solid State: Ruby Laser Solid State: Ruby Laser

The electrons move back and forth PROS:
between silvered ends of the crystal. From cost point of view, the ruby lasers are economical.
 got stimulated and excited electrons radiate
energy. Beam diameter of the ruby laser is comparatively less than CO2 gas lasers.
Thus radiated photon has the same  Output power of Ruby laser is not as less as in He-Ne gas lasers.
frequency as that of incident photon CONS:
and is also in exactly same phase.
Requires high pumping power because more than half of ground state atoms must be
Extremely intensified beam of light pumped to higher state to achieve population inversion and stimulated emission.
emerges from the semi silvered side of
the crystal. The efficiency is very low because only green component of the pumping light is used
while the rest of components are left unused.
So it is possible to get extremely
intensified and coherent beam of light The output is not continues but occurs in the form of pulses of microseconds duration.
from the crystal.– ie. LASER beam The defects due to crystalline imperfections are also present in this laser
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 6/23/2018

Solid State: Ruby Laser Solid State: Nd-YAG

Applications:
 One of the first applications for the ruby laser was in range finding.
Due to low output power they are used in toys etc.
It can be used as decoration piece & artistic display.
The host medium for this laser is Yttrium Aluminum Garnet (YAG = Y3 Al5 O12)
with 1.5% trivalent neodymium ions (Nd3+) present as impurities.
When an (Nd3+) ion is placed in a host crystal lattice it modifies the transition
probabilities between the various energy levels of the Nd3+ ion so that some
transitions, which are forbidden in the free ion, become allowed.

Ruby laser was the first laser used to optically pump tunable dye lasers The length of the Nd: YAG laser rod various from 5cm to 10cm depending on the
power of the laser and its diameter is generally 6 to 9 mm.
 The laser rod and a linear flash lamp are housed in a elliptical reflector cavity

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Solid State: Nd-YAG Solid State: Nd-YAG

 Since the rod and the lamp are located at the center of the ellipse, the light
emitted by the lamp is effectively coupled to the rod.
 The optical cavity is formed either by silvering the two ends of the rod or by
using two external reflecting mirrors.
One mirror is made hundred percent reflecting while the other mirror is left
slightly transmitting to draw the output
The system is cooled by either air or water circulation.

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 6/23/2018

Solid State: Nd-YAG Solid State: Nd-YAG

This laser system has two absorption PROS:
bands (0.73 um and 0.8 um) Both continuous and pulsed output is possible from solid state lasers.
 Optical pumping mechanism is Construction is comparatively simple.
employed.
Output power ranging from very low value of about 0.04 watts to high value of about
 Laser transition takes place between two 600 watts.
laser levels at 1.06 um.
Cost of solid state lasers is economical.
Xenon flash lamps are used for pulsed CONS:
output.
Efficiency of solid state laser is very low as compared to CO2 lasers.
 Nd: YAG laser can be operated in CW
mode also using tungsten-halide Great disadvantage of solid state lasers is the divergence, which is not constant and
incandescent lamp for optical pumping. ranges 1 milli radian to 20 milli radian.
 Continuous output powers of over 1KW Output power is also not very high as in CO2 lasers.
are obtained. Due to thermal lasing, the power loss occurs when the rod gets too hot .
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Solid State: Nd-YAG GAS Lasers: He-Ne

Applications:
 Nd: YAG solid state lasers usually used for cutting, wielding and drilling.
Nd: YAG pulsed type solid state lasers can be used in medical applications such
as in endoscopy etc.
As military application, Nd:YAG is used by as target designator and range finder.
Gas lasers are widely available in almost all power (milli watts to megawatts)
and wavelengths (UV-IR) and can be operated in pulsed and continuous modes.
Gas lasers use low density gaseous materials as active media.
Electrical pumping (continuous, pulsed) is used.
The gas lasers can be made from neutral atoms (He-Ne, metal vapor etc), ions
(e.g. Ar+) or molecules (e.g. CO2)

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 6/23/2018

GAS Lasers : He-Ne GAS Lasers : He-Ne

It consists of a glass discharge tube of about typically 30 cm long and 1.5 cm
diameter.
The active/gain medium consists of a mixture of helium and neon (10:1) inside
of a small bore capillary tube.
Electrodes are provided in the tube to produce a discharge in the gas. They are
connected to a high voltage power supply.
The cavity mirrors are arranged externally.
He-Ne laser is an atomic laser which employs a four-level pumping scheme.
Neon atoms are centers and have energy levels suitable for laser transitions
while helium atoms help efficient excitation of neon atoms.
The most common wavelength is 632.8 nm. These lasers produced powers in
the range 0.5 to 50 mW in the red portion of the visible spectrum.
They have long operating life of the order of 50,000 hrs.

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GAS Lasers : He-Ne working

When the power is switched on , a high voltage of about 10 kV is applied across
the gas.
Gas is ionized, electrons and ions are produced in the process of discharge.
The electron have a smaller mass, they acquire a higher velocity.
They transfer their kinetic energy to helium atoms.
The excited helium atoms can return to the ground state by transforming their
energy to neon atoms through collision.
So, the pumping mechanism of He-Ne Laser is when the helium atom in the
metastable state collides with neon atom in the ground state the neon atom is
excited and the helium atom drops back to the ground state.

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 6/23/2018

working GAS Lasers : He-Ne

The role of helium atom is thus to excite neon atom and cause, population
inversion.
 The probability of energy transfer from helium atoms to neon atoms is more (ratio 10:1
atoms).
 When the excited Ne atom passes from metastable state to lower level, it emits
photon of wavelength 632 nm.
This photon travels through the gas mixture parallel to the axis of tube, it is
reflected back and forth by the mirror ends until it stimulates an excited Ne
atom and causes it to emit a photon of 632nm with the stimulating photon.
Although 632.8 nm is standard wavelength of He-Ne Laser, other visible
wavelengths 543.0 nm (Green) 594.0 nm (yellow-orange), 612.0 nm (red-orange)
can also produced.
The Laser beam is highly collimated, coherent and monochromatic.
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GAS Lasers : He-Ne GAS Lasers : He-Ne

PROS: Applications:
He-Ne laser has very good coherence property, low cost and simple construction.
He-Ne lasers is used in super market to read bar codes and QR codes.
He-Ne laser can produce three wavelengths that are 1.152µm, 3.391 µm and 632.8nm, in which
the 632.8nm is most common because it is visible usually in red color.
The He-Ne lasers also used by newspapers for reproducing transmitted
He-Ne laser tube has very small length approximately from 10 to 100cm and best life time of photographs.
20.000 hours.
CONS: The He-Ne Laser is used in Holography in producing the 3D images of
It is relatively low power (output power is low) and low gain device. objects.
To obtain single wavelength laser light, the other two wavelengths of laser need suppression, He-Ne lasers can be use as an alignment tool.
which is done by many techniques and devices. So it requires extra technical skill and increases
the cost also.
He-Ne lasers have many industrial and scientific uses, and are often used in
High voltage requirement can be considered its disadvantage. laboratory demonstrations of optics.
Escaping of gas from laser plasma tube is also its disadvantage.

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