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Helium Neon (He-Ne) Lasers

Introduction:-The He-Ne laser was the first continuous wave & gas laser
invented. A few months after Maiman announced his invention of the pulsed
ruby laser, Ali Javan and his associates W. R. Bennet and D. R. Herriott
announced their creation of a He-Ne laser. This gas laser is a four-level laser
that uses helium atoms to excite neon atoms. It is the atomic transitions of the
neon atom, which produces the laser light. The most commonly used neon
transition in these lasers produces red light at 632.8 nm. But these lasers can
also produce green and yellow light in the visible as well as UV and
IR (Javan's first He-Ne operated in the IR at 1152.3 nm). By using highly
reflective mirrors designed for one of these many possible lasing transitions,
a given He-Ne's output is made to operate at a single wavelength.

glass tube He+Ne

Laser output

M1 OC

High voltage ~ 1000V

Figure 1 schematic sketch for He-Ne Laser

Construction:- Figure 1 shows a schematic sketch of a He-Ne laser. It consists

of a gas tube (discharge tube) of diameter of about 1 cm and a length of 60cm
to 100cm containing helium (15% by weight) gas at a pressure of 1 torr and
neon (85% by weight) at a pressure of 0.1 torr gas. This forms the active
medium for the he ne laser which is enclosed between a set of mirror forming
a resonant cavity with one of them completely reflecting and the other is
partially so, as to couple out the output radiation.

Working:-The pumping mechanism used in the gas laser is the electrical

discharge for obtaining population inversion. This is because the gaseous
atoms are characterized by sharp energy level rather than a band of energy
as in the case of solids. Hence, optical pumping is very inefficient for gas laser.
The energy level diagram for the He and Ne atoms are shown side by side in
figure 2.When discharge is passed through this gaseous mixture; electrons are
accelerated down to the tube. The accelerated electrons collide with the He
atoms (as they are larger in number) and excite them to higher energy level
F2 &F3. These levels happen to be metastable state and hence helium atoms
excited to these levels spends a lot of time before getting de-excited. The
excited states of Ne E4 & E6 corresponds approximately to the same energy
as that of Helium atoms F2 & F3. When the He atoms in state F2 &F3 collides
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with the neon atoms in the ground state an energy exchange takes place. As
a result, neon atoms are excited to level E4 &E6 while helium atom de-excites
to ground state. This process has high probability as the level F2 & F3 are
metastable and helium atoms are larger in number. The level E4 & E6 are also
happens to be metastable. Thus, a population inversion is achieved between
the level E4, E6 and lower lying level E3, E5. Thus a lasing action starts
between level E6-E3 (3390 nm), E4-E3 (1150 nm) and E6-E5 (632.8 nm). The
desired frequency (usually 632.8 nm) can be selected by using suitable mirror.

Figure 2 Energy level diagrams for He and Ne atom

The lasing action will populated the level E3 leading to a quenching of

population inversion. However, it automatically depopulated by
spontaneously emitting photon of wavelength around 600 nm and dropping
to level E2. Nevertheless, there is a finite probability of excitation of level E2
back to E3 & to avoid the difficulty a narrow tube is used which allows the de-
excitation of level E to E1.

He-Ne lasers typically produce a few to tens of mW of power. They are

not sources of high power laser light. Probably one of the most important
features of these lasers is that they are highly stable, both in terms of their
wavelength (mode stability) and intensity of their output light (low jitter in
power level). For these reasons, He-Ne lasers are often used to stabilize other
lasers. They are also used in applications, such as holography, where mode
stability is important. Until the mid 1990's, He-Ne lasers were the dominant
type of lasers produced for low power applications - from range finding to
scanning to optical transmission, to laser pointers, etc. Recently, however,
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other types of lasers, most notably the semiconductor lasers, seem to have won
the competition because of reduced costs.

Advantage over ruby laser

1) Light from He Ne laser are much more directional and
monochromatic compared to ruby laser.
2) It provides a continuous output while ruby laser operates in flash.
3) No need of cooling arrangement as there is no high power optical
pumping.
Disadvantage
1) Internal mirrors have to be used which is eroded because of discharge.
2) If external mirror is used, there is considerable amount of losses at the
end of discharge tube.

However these
difficulties are
removed using
Brewster’s windows at
the ends of tube but in
that case output is a
plane polarized light.