M.No:3.

12
Different Kinds of Lasers

RUBY LASER
Let us consider the case of an actual laser known as Ruby laser. It uses a
crystalline substance of the active material. The difference parts are shown in
Fig.(1).

Figure 1: Parts of Ruby Laser

The three main parts of ruby laser are:
(1) An active working material: a rod of ruby crystal.
(2) A resonant cavity made of fully reflecting plate at the left of ruby crystal and a
partially reflecting plate at the right of ruby crystal. Both the plates are optically
plane and exactly parallel to each other.
(3) Exciting system: A helical xenon flash tube with power supply source.
Ruby (Al2O3, Cr2O3) is a crystal of aluminium oxide Al2O3 in which some aluminium
atoms are replaced by chromium atoms (Cr2O3). The active material in the ruby
are chromium ions Cr3+. When ruby crystal contains about 0.5 % of chromium, its
colour is pink. The ruby crystals are grown in special furnaces with varying length
and diameter. In a ruby laser, a pink rod of 4 cm length and 0.5 cm in diameter is
generally used. The end faces of the rod are made strictly parallel grounded and
polished to a high degree. The end faces are then silvered in such a way that one
end face becomes fully reflecting while the other end partially reflecting.
Sometimes separate pieces are attached at the end faces. The ruby rod is
surrounded by a helical xenon flash tube which provides the pumping light to raise
the chromium ions to upper energy level. The flash of the 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 of ruby laser:
An energy diagram illustrating the operation principle of ruby laser is shown in
Fig. 2. In this figure E1, E2 and E3 represent the energy levels of chromium ion. In
normal state, the chromium ion is in lower energy level E1. When the ruby crystal
is irradiated with light of xenon flash, the chromium atoms are excited to upper
energy level E3 where light absorption band is 5600 Ao.

Figure (2).Energy levels of ruby

The transition 1 is optical pumping transition. The excited ions give up, by collision,
part of their energy to crystal lattice and decay to the metastable state E2. The
corresponding transition 2 is thus radiationless transition. We know that
metastable state has relatively longer life time (≈10-3 sec) then usual life time (≈ 10-
8
sec). Thus the number of ions in state E2 goes on increasing while due to
pumping, the number of ions in ground state E1 goes on decreasing. In this way,
population inversion is established between metastable state E2 and ground state
E1.
The state of inverted population is not a stable one. The probability of spontaneous
transition at any moment is very high. When the ion passes spontaneously from
the metastable state to ground state, it emits a photon of wavelengths 6943 Ao.
This photon travels through the ruby rod. If this photon is moving parallel to the
axis of the crystal, it is reflected back and forth by the silver ends until it stimulates
an excited atom. Now it causes the ion to emit a fresh photon. The excited atom
after emitting photon returns to ground level. The emitted photon is in phase with
the stimulating photon. This stimulated transition 4 is laser transition. The process
is repeated again and again because the photons repeatedly move along the
crystal being reflected from its ends.
Now the stimulated (coherent) radiation along the axis starts dominating due to
multiple reflections i.e., photon travelling parallel to the axis of the tube (crystal) will
start a cascade of photon emission while the photons travelling in any direction
other than this will pass out of ruby. Photon beam parallel to the axis of the crystal
grows in strength and some of it bursts through the partial reflector and serves as
the output laser beam. A stage is reached where the population inversion caused
by one flash of xenon tube is used up. The laser beam then ceases till the next
flash of xenon tube repeats the process. Thus the ruby laser is a pulsed laser, of
course, continuous wave lasers are also in use.
The output beams have principal wavelengths of 6943 Ao equal to about 4.32×1014
c/s, which is in the visible spectrum. The duration of output flash is about 300
microseconds. It is very intense of about 10,000 watt. The high power intensity is
due to coherence of output beam because the photons moving parallel to the axis
have space, time and directional coherence.
SEMICONDUCTOR LASER:
We know that when a current is passed through a p-n junction, p-region being
positively biased, holes are injected from p-region into n-region and electrons from
n-region into the p-region. The electrons and holes recombine and release of
energy takes place in a very near the junction region. The amount of this energy,
called the activation energy or energy gap, depends on the particular type of
semiconductor. In case of some semiconductors like germanium and silicon, most
of the energy is released in the shape of heat because the recombination of
carriers of opposite sign takes place through interaction with the atoms of the
crystals. But in case of other semiconductors such as Gallium Arsenide (GaAs)
and others, the energy is released as light because the atoms of the crystals are
not involved in the release of energy. The wavelength of emitted light depends on
activation energy of the crystal. Photons emitted at the moment of recombination
of an electron with a hole will stimulate recombination of other carriers of electric
charges. The result will be stimulated emission of radiation. If these radiations
moving in the plane of the junction are made to move back and forth in the plane
of the junction by reflection at opposite parallel sides and perpendicular to the
plate of junction radiation can be produced.
In the first models of semiconductor laser, the active medium was a single crystal
of gallium arsenide GaAs cut into a platelet having a thickness of 0.5 mm as
shown in fig. 3. The platelet consists of two parts exhibiting an electron
conductivity and a hole conductivity respectively. The emission is stimulated in p-n
junction layer which, of course, is very thin. Electric current is applied to the crystal
platelet through a strip electrode fixed to its upper surface.
 Figure-3: Design of a semiconductor laser emitting element

When exciting currents are small, only a small part of carriers undergo
recombination. The process is spontaneous. The laser radiation is random and
incoherent. But when the current density is increased the emission becomes more
and more coherent and the radiation intensity markedly increases. The efficiency
of GaAs lasers reaches 40 per cent. When cooled to 20 K, semiconductor lasers
have delivered an output of more than two watts of continuous power, which is the
most continuous power produced by a laser. It is believed that semiconductor
lasers may reached 100% efficiency. They are capable of ensuring a high stability
of the output frequency, which is the characteristic only of gas lasers.

Helium-Neon Laser:
The necessary population inversion can be achieved in a variety of ways. A
familiar example is the helium-neon laser, a common and inexpensive laser that is
available in many undergraduate laboratories. A mixture of helium and neon,
typically at a pressure of the order of 102 Pa (10-3 atm), is scaled in a glass
enclosure provided with two electrodes. When a sufficiently high voltage is applied,
an electric discharge occurs. Collisions between ionized atoms and electrons
carrying the discharge current excite atoms to various energy states.
Figure 4(a) shows an energy-level diagram for the system. The labels for the
various energy levels, such as 1s, 3p, and 5s, refer to states of the electrons in the
levels. Because of restrictions imposed by conservation of angular momentum, a
helium atom with an electron excited to a 2s state cannot return to a ground (1s)
state by emitting a 20.61eV photon, as you might expect it to do. Such a state, in
which single-photon emission is impossible, has an unusually long lifetime and is
called a metastable state. Helium atoms “pile up” in the metastable 2s states,
creating a population inversion relative to the ground states.

Figure-4: (a) Energy level diagram for a He-Ne laser.

(b) Operation of a He-Ne laser.
However, excited helium atoms can lose energy by energy-exchange collisions
with neon atoms that are initially in a ground state. A helium atom, excited to a 2s
state 20.61eV above its ground states and possessing a little additional kinetic
energy, can collide with a neon atom in a ground state, exciting the neon atom to a
5s excited state at 20.66eV and dropping the helium atom back to a ground state.
Thus we have the necessary mechanism for a population inversion in neon, with
more neon atoms per 5s state than per 3p state.
Stimulated emissions during transitions from a 5s to a 3p state then result in the
emission of highly coherent light at 632.8 nm, as shown in Fig. 4(a). In practice the
beam is sent back and forth through the gas many times by a pair of parallel
mirrors [Fig. 4(b)], so as to stimulate emission from as many excited atoms as
possible. One of the mirrors is partially transparent, so a portion of the beam
emerges as an external beam. The net result of all these processes is a beam of
light that can be quite intense, has parallel rays, is highly monochromatic, and is
spatially coherent at all points within a given cross section. Other types of lasers
use different processes to achieve the necessary population inversion. In a
semiconductor laser the inversion is obtained by driving electrons and holes to a p-
n junction with a steady electric field. In one type of chemical laser a chemical
reaction forms molecules in metastable excited states. In a carbon dioxide gas
dynamic laser the population inversion results from rapid expansion of the gas. A
maser (acronym for “microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”)
operates on the basis of population inversions in molecules, using closely spaced
energy levels. The corresponding emitted radiation is in the microwave range.
Maser action even occurs naturally in interstellar molecular clouds.

USES OF LASERS:
(1) A high-intensity laser beam can drill a very small hole in a diamond for use as a
die in drawing very small-diameter wire.
(2) Surveyors often use lasers, especially in situations requiring great precision
such as drilling a long tunnel from both ends; the laser beam has parallel rays that
can travel long distances without appreciable spreading.
(3) A laser with a very narrow intense beam can be used in the treatment of a
detached retina. Laser beams are used in surgery; blood vessels cut by the beam
tend to seal themselves off, making it easier to control bleeding. Lasers are also
used for selective destruction of tissue, as in the removal of tumors.