Abstract
Before addressing the foundations and the functions of the laser in detail in the following chapters, we would like to give an overview of its most important concepts and interrelations.
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Notes
- 1.
1 TW = 1012 W.
- 2.
In addition to spontaneous emission, there are a number of further relaxation processes, which, however, will not be addressed here.
- 3.
Laser levels are those energy levels between which the desired transition occurs for the laser emission.
- 4.
Isotropic: distributed equally.
- 5.
What is meant by lifetime of an energy level is the time that the uninfluenced atom remains at this level before it passes into a lower energy state.
- 6.
For example, in a helium–neon (HeNe) laser: pumping process using helium atoms, the laser transition using neon atoms.
- 7.
With regard to the feedback cycle, the outcoupling represents a loss since it reduces the power circulating in the system.
- 8.
“Mode” is short for “mode of propagation.”
- 9.
Monochromatic: single-colored, which means only one light frequency appears.
- 10.
The diffraction at the exit window determines the minimum possible expansion of the exiting beam; this is the so-called diffraction limit. Several modern lasers lie even at high output powers only a few percentage points above this limit.
- 11.
Here coherence means longitudinal or temporal coherence.
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© 2018 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature
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Poprawe, R., Boucke, K., Hoffman, D. (2018). An Introduction to Laser Technology. In: Tailored Light 1. RWTHedition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01234-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01234-1_2
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