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UNIT-II LASER

LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

It means that amplitude of light wave is increased by the process of stimulated emission of radiation. We know that light is an electromagnetic wave, then what is the difference between ordinary & LASER light.

Before to go details on this topic first we have to know the meaning of energy state of an atom. We know that every atom consists of electrons revolving around nucleus in various orbits as per the rule in various energy levels. When there was no external energy supply to the atom, the total energy of all electrons in that atom is called ground state energy of that atom. When we supply external energy to the atom, electrons excited to the higher energy orbits, then the total energy of the atom is now increased by that amount. Now the energy of that atom is called excited energy & it is represented by a horizontal line above the ground state energy. Therefore electron excitation = Atom excitation

Basic concepts for a laser


Absorption Spontaneous Emission Stimulated Emission Population inversion

Rate of absorption is directly proportional to number of atoms present in ground state & energy density of radiation

Rate of spontaneous emission is directly proportional to number of atoms present in excited state.

Rate of stimulated emission is directly proportional to number of atoms in excited state & energy density of radiation

Metastable state : To achieve population inversion, atoms in excited state has to stay more time . That is life time of the atoms in that state must greater than that of normal life time 10-8 Sec. The energy states which are having life time greater than 10-8 sec are called metastable state.

LASER PRINCIPLE & LASING ACTION

Basic components of a LASER device


A Laser device is basically consists of three parts.

E2

Excited State E1 Meta Stable State

Atoms Atoms h h h Pumping E2 E1

E0

Ground State

E2

Excited State E1 Meta Stable State

E0

Ground State

E2 E1 Atoms E0 After Stimulated Emission h h h

Atoms E0 Rapid fall after 10-8 s

Types of Lasers Depending upon the nature of active medium Laser sources are divided in to three types.

1.Solid state laser 2.Liquid Laser 3.Gaseous Laser

Ruby Laser Dye Laser He-Ne, CO2 Laser

TYPES OF LASERS:
Among the various kinds of lasers, solid state lasers, gas laser, liquid laser, dye laser and semiconductor laser are some important types of lasers. 1. SOLID STATE LASERS : Ruby laser, Nd:YAG laser 2. GAS LASER : He-Ne laser , CO2 laser 3. LIQUID LASER : European chelate laser, SeOCl2 laser 4. DYE LASER : Rhodamine 6G lasers 5. SEMICONDUCTOR LASER : InP laser ,GaAs laser.

RUBY LASER: Ruby laser is a three level solid state laser and was constructed by Maiman in 1960. it is a pulsed laser having very high power of hundreads of mega watt in a single pulse with about 10 nano second duration Ruby(Al2O3) laser uses a crystalline substance as a active material.

Three Level Laser System: Ruby Laser

Construction: Ruby is a crystal of aluminum oxide (Al2O3) in which some aluminum atoms are replaced by chromium atoms. The active material in the ruby are chromium ions Cr+3. when the ruby crystal contains about 0.5% of chromium its color is pink In a ruby laser, a pink rod of 4 cm length and 0.5 cm in diameter is generally used. The end faces of rod are made strictly parallel, ground and high degree. The end faces are silvered that one end becomes fully reflecting while the other end partially reflecting. The ruby rod is surrounded by a helical xenon flash tube which provides the pumping light to raise the chromium ions to upper energy levels. The flash of xenon tube lasts several milliseconds and the tube consumes several thousand joules of energy. Only a part of this energy is used in pumping the Cr+3 ions while the rest heats up the apparatus. For this purpose a cooling arrangement is used.

Working: When the ruby crystal is irradiate with the light of xenon flash, the chromium atoms are excited and pass to upper level where the light absorption band is 5600 Ao. The absorption band width of this level is about 800 Ao. New few excited chromium atoms return to ground level 1 and other to level 2. The transition 3->2 are non irradiative. The chromium atoms give part of energy to crystalline lattice in the form of heat. Most of excited atoms in state 3 returns to state 1 but those which go to state 2 have a little chance to return to state 1 spontaneously. After few milliseconds the level 2 becomes more populated than level 1. And hence population inversion is achieved. The state of inverted population is unstable and the probability of spontaneous transitions is very high. The spontaneous transitions may cause an induced transition which produces a photon. This photon knocks out second photon from neighboring atom. The atom from which the first photon was emitted is brought to ground level. The photons will knock out two more photons and their total number will be four and so on. Photon travelling parallel to the axis of the tube will start a cascade of photon emission while the photon travelling in any direction other than this will pass out of ruby. Photon beam parallel to the axis of crystal grows in strength and some of it burst through the particle reflector and serves as laser output beam. The laser beam then causes till next flash of xenon tube repeats the process. Thus the ruby laser is a pulsed laser. The output beam has wavelength of 6943 Ao which is in the visible spectrum. The duration of output flash about 300msec .It is very intense of about 10000 watts Fig: Energy level of ruby

Working of ruby laser level E3 I shortRuby laser is based on three energy levels. The upper energy
lived, E1 is ground state, E2 is metastable state with lifetime of 0.003 sec.

Drawbacks of Ruby laser


The laser requires high pumping power because the laser transition terminates at the ground state and more than half of ground state atoms must be pumped to higher state to achieve population inversion. The efficiency of ruby laser is very low because only green component of the pumping light is used while the rest of components are left unused. The laser output is not continuous but occurs in the form of pulses of microseconds duration. The defects due to crystalline imperfections are also present in this laser.

He-Ne laser

1 3.39 m 2 0.6328 m 3 1.15 m

Semiconductor Laser
Semiconductor laser is a specially fabricated pn-junction device, that produce laser light when it is forward biased. We know that semiconductors are of two types. They are (i) Pure semiconductors & (ii) Extrinsic semiconductors. Depending upon impurity addition extrinsic semiconductors are of two types. (i) P-type&(ii) N-type semiconductors. Depending upon energy band diagram pure semiconductors are divided into two type. (i) Direct band gap semiconductor (ii) Indirect band gap semiconductor. Conduction band & valence band are nothing but E K diagram of an electron in moving in the crystal. They are represented by

In the case of direct band gap semiconductors the recombination of electron is released in the form of light, where as in indirect band gap semiconductors recombination energy is emitted in the form of heat. Therefore in the design of LED & semiconductor laser, the basic structure i.e. pn-junction is prepared from a pure semiconductor of direct band gap nature. Construction : The pn- junction in semiconductor laser is prepared from a pure semiconductor of direct band gap nature, where one half is doped heavily with P-type impurity and the other half is doped heavily with N- type impurity . Due to this heavy doping the Fermi levels for N-type lie within conduction band & similarly Fermi level for P-type is well within the valence band. At thermal equilibrium the energy band diagram is as shown in Fig. Impure semiconductors with heavy doping are called degenerate semiconductors.

Two opposite sides of the junction are coated with fully reflecting and partially reflecting. These two coated faces acts as resonating cavity. The other two opposite sides of the crystal were made optically rough, to prevent lasing action in that direction.

Working
When the pn-junction is forward biased, electrons from n-region & holes from P-reason are injected into P & N regions respectively. During injection, electrons and holes recombine in the depletion region, producing spontaneous emitted photons. As the current through the junction is increasing, at one particular current valve, called threshold current more charge carriers are available at depletion, leading to create population inversion. Now a spontaneously emitted photon triggers stimulated emission process, producing a Laser beam after reflecting back and forth between reflecting surfaces. At threshold current density, the rate of stimulated emission process is more than rate of spontaneous emission & overcome from absorption losses . Therefore semiconductor laser is also called injection Laser.

Advantages of semiconductor Laser: 1. Semiconductor laser diodes are simple, compact and more efficient 2.They require very little power and little auxiliary equipment. 3.

Properties of Laser light


1. Directionality: Laser light is highly directional, i.e. spreading of laser light is very small even when it is traveled through large distances from source. For e.g. The laser beam spread is less than 0.01mm for a distance of 1m. The divergence of a beam when it passing through a lens of diameter D is given by =1.22/D The high directionality allows us to focus it into a point by passing through a suitable convex lens. If f is the focal length and a is the radius of the beam, then area A of focused spot At focal plane is given by A=2f2/a2 For a= 2 mm, =5000Ao &f= 5cm then A= 4.9x10-10m2 Which is extremely small.

Monochromaticity: Laser light is highly monochromatic when


compared to the ordinary light source. The monochromaticity of a source is defined by a quantity /. For laser light it is extremely small. In other words the line width of laser source is much narrow compared to ordinary light.

Coherence: Coherence means that two or more waves in radiation


field bears the same phase relationship to each other at all times. Light emitted by ordinary light source is completely incoherent, because light waves are moving in all possible directions. Laser light is highly coherent is due to stimulated emission process. For a well-controlled laser the coherence length is of the order of few Kilo meters. That is they can maintain their sinusoidal nature up to few kilo meters.

Intensity: Since laser light is highly directional, hence it is having


more intensity than ordinary light. Because of their high intensity, they produce very high temp. when they were focused to a point & this can be used for drilling holes in hard materials like diamond, cut hard metal sheets.

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