How Tattoo Removal Works

So you didn't believe your Mom when she said you'd regret getting that tattoo -the multicolored, fire-breathing dragon that starts at the small of your back, reaches up to your shoulder blades and wraps its orange flames around your biceps. Now, a mere seven years later, you have a shot at a terrific job in banking, still one of the more conservative businesses around, and you are concerned that your symbol of youthful self-expression could create problems in your new career. Well, you're not alone. Tattoos have become part of American mainstream culture over the past couple of decades. Some estimate that more than 10 million Americans have at least one tattoo, and there are about 4,000 tattoo studios now in business in the United States. One busy professional who specializes in tattoo removal -- he's removed tattoos from some of the most famous tattoo artists -estimates that about 50 percent of those who get tattoos later regret them. For years, these people had little recourse, and existing removal techniques were invasive (requiring surgery) and painful. But that's changing. In this edition we'll examine how new laser tattoo removal techniques are helping people of all ages rid themselves of something that, for a variety of reasons, they no longer want on their bodies. (Falling out of love and wanting a no-longerspecial person's name removed is the most popular reason cited, experts say!)

What Is a Tattoo?
Let's quickly remind ourselves exactly what a tattoo is: A tattoo is a permanent mark or design made on the body when pigment is inserted into the dermal layer of the skin through ruptures in the skin's top layer

Modern-day tattoos are applied by using an electric tattoo machine with needles that rapidly puncture the skin with an up and down motion not unlike that of a sewing machine.

Can All Tattoos Be Removed?

Most dermatologic surgeons caution that complete tattoo removal is not possible. Tattoos are meant to be permanent, so removing them is difficult. Few surgeons guarantee complete removal. Having said that, there are several methods of tattoo removal, which have proven effective. The degree of remaining color variations or blemishes depends upon several factors, including size, location, the individual's ability to heal, how the tattoo was applied and how long it has been in place. For example, a tattoo applied by a more experienced artist may be easier to remove since the pigment was evenly injected in the same level of the skin. New tattoos may also be more difficult to remove than old ones. Doctors say they can't predict the exact degree of removal because they generally don't know which of the 100 tattoo inks available today were used. (The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently lists tattoo pigments as "color additives," which are intended only for application to the top layer of the skin.) Consult with a removal specialist -- be sure to take a list of questions along.

What Methods Are Used for Tattoo Removal?

Before lasers became popular for tattoo removal starting in the late 1980s, removal involved the use of one or more of these often-painful, often scarinducing surgeries:

Dermabrasion, where skin is "sanded" to remove the surface and middle layers;

Cryosurgery, where the area is frozen prior to its removal;

Excision, where the dermatologic surgeon removes the tattoo with a scalpel and closes the wound with stitches (In some cases involving large tattoos, a skin graft from another part of the body may be necessary.).

Although the procedures above are still used in certain cases today, lasers (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation) have become the standard treatment for tattoo removal because they offer a bloodless, low risk, effective alternative with minimal side effects. Each procedure is done on an outpatient basis in a single or series of visits. Patients may or may not require topical or local anesthesia. As early as the 1960s, lasers had been developed for industrial uses. When researchers developed lasers that emitted wavelengths of light in short flashes called pulses, medical use became viable. These lasers can effectively remove tattoos with a low risk of scarring, according to the American Academy of Dermatology . The type of laser used to remove a tattoo depends on the tattoo's pigment colors. (Yellow and green are the hardest colors to remove; blue and black are the easiest.)The three lasers developed specifically for use in tattoo removal use a technique known as Q-switching, which refers to the laser's short, high-energy pulses: the Q-switched Ruby, the Q-switched Alexandrite, the Q-switched Nd: YAG,

The YAG is the newest system in this class of lasers and particularly advanced in the removal of red, blue and black inks.

How Do Lasers Remove Tattoos?

Lasers work by producing short pulses of intense light that passes harmlessly through the top layers of the skin to be selectively absorbed by the tattoo pigment. This laser energy causes the tattoo pigment to fragment into smaller particles that are then removed by the body's immune system. Researchers have determined which wavelengths of light to use and how to deliver the laser's output to best remove tattoo ink. (If you're wondering if the laser might also remove normal skin pigment, don't worry. The laser selectively targets the pigment of the tattoo without damaging the surrounding skin.)

Does Tattoo Removal Hurt and What Can I Expect?

The unfortunate thing about tattoos is that both getting them and having them taken off can be uncomfortable. The impact of the energy from the laser's powerful pulse of light has been described as similar to getting hot specks of bacon grease on your skin or being snapped by a thin rubber band. (Compare these descriptions to those of how it feels to get a tattoo in How Tattoos Work.) Because black pigment absorbs all laser wavelengths, it's the easiest to remove. Other colors, such as green, selectively absorb laser light and can only be treated by selected lasers based on the pigment color. In preparation for a laser procedure, doctors recommend that non-aspirin products, like Tylenol, be used for minor aches and pains prior to the procedure, because aspirin and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents such as Ibuprofen can produce pronounced bruising after treatment. Further pre-treatment steps might include the application of a prescription anesthetic cream two hours before the laser session. It is wiped off just before laser surgery begins. (Some patients say they don't need this. Others prefer to have a local anesthetic injected into the tattoo prior to laser therapy. Pinpoint bleeding is sometimes associated with the procedure.) Then pulses of light from the laser are directed onto the tattoo, breaking up the pigment. Over the next few weeks, the body's scavenger cells remove pigment residues. More than one treatment, which actually only takes minutes, is usually needed to remove an entire tattoo -- the number of sessions depends on the amount and type of ink used and how deeply it was injected. Three-week intervals between sessions are required to allow pigment residue to be absorbed by the body. Following treatment, the doctor will apply an antibacterial ointment and dressing to the area, which should be kept clean with continued application of ointment as

directed by your doctor. A shower or bath the day after treatment is okay, but the treatment area should not be scrubbed. Your skin might feel slightly sunburned for a couple of days and the treated area may remain red for a few weeks. The site might also form a scab, which should be handled gently. After healing, the sites will gradually and continually fade. Side effects of laser procedures are generally few but may include hyperpigmentation, or an abundance of color in the skin at the treatment site, and hypo pigmentation, where the treated area lacks normal skin color. Other possible side effects include infection of the site, lack of complete pigment removal and a 5 percent chance of permanent scarring.

How Much Does It Cost to Remove a Tattoo?

Something to think about BEFORE you get that tattoo is the fact that having a tattoo removed is much more expensive than having one put on. Laser tattoo removal can range from several hundred dollars up into the thousands of dollars, depending upon the size, type and location of the tattoo and the number of visits required. More bad news is that medical insurance generally doesn't pay for tattoo removal, since it is considered aesthetic or cosmetic in nature. (Traumatic tattoos, which result from accidents or injury, are a different matter.) Because this is a medical procedure, make sure to see a dermatologic surgeon who specializes in tattoo removal. Check with the American Society for Laser Medicine & Surgery or the American Society of Dermatologic Surgeons for a referral or ask your own doctor for the name of a specialist in your area. (Some tattoo parlors also provide tattoo removal services. Before you sign on, make sure the person doing the removal is associated with a medical doctor who specializes in laser surgery! Tattoo removal, like tattoo application, carries with it the risk of infection and must be handled with extreme care.

How Can A Retired Gang Member Remove a Tattoo?

When a gang member gets smart and wants to get out of the gang and find employment, he or she finds it nearly impossible to do so. Tattoos turn off employers. "People just look at me and know I was a gang member," said a 19year-old from Ojai when he went for an unsuccessful job interview. Tattoos are a stigma that follows them through life. They find it difficult to get a job. They find it difficult to have a lasting relationship. They find it difficult to become a productive member of society.

When people begin to regret their tattoos, many resort to drastic measures. These extreme measures to remove gang tattoos illustrate the steps our youth will take to get out of gangs, hoping to lead productive lives. Participants are initially screened for attitude and motivation. The individual must WANT to change their life and be willing to donate their time to various agencies and companies. In exchange for volunteer time, they can have LTR treatments at a discounted price.

How Light Works

by Craig Freudenrich, Ph.D.

We see things every day, from the moment we get up in the morning until we go to sleep at night. We look at everything around us using light. We appreciate kids' crayon drawings, fine oil paintings, swirling computer graphics, gorgeous sunsets, a blue sky, shooting stars and rainbows. We rely on mirrors to make ourselves presentable, and sparkling gemstones to show affection. But did you ever stop to think that when we see any of these things, we are not directly connected to it? We are, in fact, seeing light -- light that somehow left objects far or near and reached our eyes. Light is all our eyes can really see. The other way that we encounter light is in devices that produce light -incandescent bulbs, fluorescent bulbs, lasers, lightning bugs, and the sun. Each one uses a different technique to generate photons.

Ways of Thinking About Light

You have probably heard two different ways of talking about light: There is the "particle" theory, expressed in part by the word photon. There is the "wave" theory, expressed by the term light wave. From the time of the ancient Greeks, people have thought of light as a stream of tiny particles. After all, light travels in straight lines and bounces off a mirror much like a ball bouncing off a wall. No one had actually seen particles of light, but even now it's easy to explain why that might be. The particles could be too small, or moving too fast, to be seen, or perhaps our eyes see right through them. The idea of the light wave came from Christian Huygens, who proposed in the late 1600s that light acted like a wave instead of a stream of particles. In 1807, Thomas Young backed up Huygens' theory by showing that when light passes through a very narrow opening, it can spread out, and interfere with light passing through another opening. Young shined a light through a very narrow slit. What he saw was a bright bar of light that corresponded to the slit. But that was not all he saw. Young also perceived additional light, not as bright, in the areas around the bar. If light were a stream of particles, this additional light would not have been there. This experiment suggested that light spread out like a wave. In fact, a beam of light radiates outward at all times. Albert Einstein advanced the theory of light further in 1905. Einstein considered the photoelectric effect, in which ultraviolet light hits a surface and causes electrons to be emitted from the surface. Einstein's explanation for this was that light was made up of a stream of energy packets called photons.

Modern physicists believe that light can behave as both a particle and a wave, but they also recognize that either view is a simple explanation for something more complex. In this article, we will talk about light as waves, because this provides the best explanation for most of the phenomena our eyes can see.

What is Light?
Why is it that a beam of light radiates outward, as Young proved? What is really going on? To understand light waves, it helps to start by discussing a more familiar kind of wave -- the one we see in the water. One key point to keep in mind about the water wave is that it is not made up of water: The wave is made up of energy traveling through the water. If a wave moves across a pool from left to right, this does not mean that the water on the left side of the pool is moving to the right side of the pool. The water has actually stayed about where it was. It is the wave that has moved. When you move your hand through a filled bathtub, you make a wave, because you are putting your energy into the water. The energy travels through the water in the form of the wave. Light waves are a little more complicated, and they do not need a medium to travel through. They can travel through a vacuum. A light wave consists of energy in the form of electric and magnetic fields. The fields vibrate at right angles to the direction of movement of the wave, and at right angles to each other. Because light has both electric and magnetic fields, it is also referred to as electromagnetic radiation. Light waves come in many sizes. The size of a wave is measured as its wavelength, which is the distance between any two corresponding points on successive waves, usually peak-to-peak or trough-to-trough. The wavelengths of the light we can see range from 400 to 700 billionths of a meter. But the full range of wavelengths included in the definition of electromagnetic radiation extends from one billionth of a meter, as in gamma rays, to centimeters and meters, as in radio waves. Light is one small part of the spectrum. Light waves also come in many frequencies. The frequency is the number of waves that pass a point in space during any time interval, usually one second. It is measured in units of cycles (waves) per second, or Hertz (Hz). The frequency of visible light is referred to as color, and ranges from 430 trillion Hz, seen as red, to 750 trillion Hz, seen as violet. Again, the full range of frequencies extends beyond the visible spectrum, from less than one billion Hz, as in radio waves, to greater than 3 billion Hz, as in gamma rays. As noted above, light waves are waves of energy. The amount of energy in a light wave is proportionally related to its frequency: High frequency light has high energy; low frequency light has low energy. Thus gamma rays have the most energy, and radio waves have the least. Of visible light, violet has the most energy and red the least.

Light not only vibrates at different frequencies, it also travels at different speeds. Light waves move through a vacuum at their maximum speed, 300,000 kilometers per second or 186,000 miles per second, which makes light the fastest phenomenon in the universe. Light waves slow down when they travel inside substances, such as air, water, glass or a diamond. The way different substances affect the speed at which light travels is key to understanding the bending of light, or refraction, which we will discuss later.

Figure 2

So light waves come in a continuous variety of sizes, frequencies and energies. We refer to this continuum as the electromagnetic spectrum. Visible light occupies only one-thousandth of a percent of the spectrum.

Producing a Photon
Any light that you see is made up of a collection of one or more photons propagating through space as electromagnetic waves. In total darkness, our eyes are actually able to sense single photons, but generally what we see in our daily lives comes to us in the form of zillions of photons produced by light sources and reflected off objects. If you look around you right now, there is probably a light source in the room producing photons, and objects in the room that reflect those photons. Your eyes absorb some of the photons flowing through the room, and that is how you see. There are many different ways to produce photons, but all of them use the same mechanism inside an atom to do it. This mechanism involves the energizing of electrons orbiting each atom's nucleus. How Nuclear Radiation Works describes protons, neutrons and electrons in some detail. For example, hydrogen atoms have one electron orbiting the nucleus. Helium atoms have two electrons orbiting the nucleus. Aluminum atoms have 13 electrons orbiting the nucleus. Each atom has a preferred number of electrons orbiting its nucleus.

Electrons circle the nucleus in fixed orbits -- a simplified way to think about it is to imagine how satellites orbit the Earth. There's a huge amount of theory around electron orbitals, but to understand light there is just one key fact to understand: An electron has a natural orbit that it occupies, but if you energize an atom you can move its electrons to higher orbitals. A photon of light is produced whenever an electron in a higher-than-normal orbit falls back to its normal orbit. During the fall from high-energy to normal-energy, the electron emits a photon -- a packet of energy -- with very specific characteristics. The photon has a frequency, or color, that exactly matches the distance the electron falls. There are cases where you can see this phenomenon quite clearly. For example, in lots of factories and parking lots you see sodium vapor lights. You can tell a sodium vapor light because it is very yellow when you look at it. A sodium vapor light energizes sodium atoms to generate photons. A sodium atom has 11 electrons, and because of the way they are stacked in orbitals one of those electrons is most likely to accept and emit energy (this electron is called the 3s electron, and is explained on this page). The energy packets that this electron is most likely to emit fall right around a wavelength of 590 nanometers. This wavelength corresponds to yellow light. If you run sodium light through a prism, you do not see a rainbow -- you see a pair of yellow lines. Probably the most common way to energize atoms is with heat, and this is the basis of incandescence. If you heat up a horseshoe with a blowtorch, it will eventually get red hot, and if you heat it enough it gets white hot. Red is the lowest-energy visible light, so in a red-hot object the atoms are just getting enough energy to begin emitting light that we can see. Once you apply enough heat to cause white light, you are energizing so many different electrons in so many different ways that all of the colors are being generated -- they all mix together to look white, as explained in one of the sections below. Heat is the most common way we see light being generated -- a normal 75-watt incandescent bulb is generating light by using electricity to create heat. However, there are lots of other ways to generate light, some of which are listed below: Halogen lamps - Halogen lamps use electricity to generate heat, but benefit from a technique that lets the filament run hotter. Gas lanterns - A gas lantern uses a fuel like natural gas or kerosene as the source of heat. Fluorescent lights - Fluorescent lights use electricity to directly energize atoms rather than requiring heat. Lasers - Lasers use energy to "pump" a lasing medium, and all of the energized atoms are made to dump their energy at the exact same wavelength and phase. Glow-in-the-dark toys - In a glow-in-the-dark toy, the electrons are energized but fall back to lower-energy orbitals over a long period of time, so the toy can glow for half an hour. Indiglo watches - In Indiglo watches, voltage energizes phosphor atoms. Chemical light sticks - A chemical light stick and, for that matter, fireflies, use a chemical reaction to energize atoms. The thing to note from this list is that anything that produces light does it by energizing atoms in some way.

Making Colors
Visible light is light that can be perceived by the human eye. When you look at the visible light of the sun, it appears to be colorless, which we call white. And although we can see this light, white is not considered to be part of the visible spectrum. This is because white light is not the light of a single color, or frequency. Instead, it is made up of many color frequencies. When sunlight passes through a glass of water to land on a wall, we see a rainbow on the wall. This would not happen unless white light was a mixture of all of the colors of the visible spectrum. Isaac Newton was the first person to demonstrate this. Newton passed sunlight through a glass prism to separate the colors into a rainbow spectrum. He then passed sunlight through a second glass prism and combined the two rainbows. The combination produced white light. This proved conclusively that white light is a mixture of colors, or a mixture of light of different frequencies. The combination of every color in the visible spectrum produces a light that is colorless, or white. Colors by Addition - You can do a similar experiment with three flashlights and three different colors of cellophane -- red, green and blue (commonly referred to as RGB). Cover one flashlight with one to two layers of red cellophane and fasten the cellophane with a rubber band (do not use too many layers or you will block the light from the flashlight). Cover another flashlight with blue cellophane and a third flashlight with green cellophane. Go into a darkened room, turn the flashlights on and shine them against a wall so that the beams overlap. Where red and blue light overlap, you will see magenta. Where red and green light overlap, you will see yellow. Where green and blue light overlap, you will see cyan. You will notice that white light can be made by various combinations, such as yellow with blue, magenta with green, cyan with red, and by mixing all of the colors together.

By adding various combinations of red, green and blue light, you can make all the colors of the visible spectrum. This is how computer monitors (RGB monitors) produce colors.

When Light Hits an Object

When a light wave hits an object, what happens to it depends on the energy of the light wave, the natural frequency at which electrons vibrate in the material and the strength with which the atoms in the material hold on to their electrons. Based on these three factors, four different things can happen when light hits an object:

When treating an object some of the lasers waves will Scatter, Transmit, Absorb and some will Reflect. Hence the acronym STAR. The waves can be reflected or scattered off the object. The object can absorb the waves. The waves can be refracted through the object. The waves can pass through the object with no effect. And more than one of these possibilities can happen at once. The following five illustrations show these possibilities, with reflection and scattering illustrated separately. Scattering is merely reflection off a rough surface. Incoming light waves get reflected at all sorts of angles, because the surface is uneven. The surface of paper is a good example. You can see just how rough it is if you look at it under a microscope. When light hits paper, the waves are reflected in all directions. This is what makes paper so incredibly useful -- you can read the words on a printed page regardless of the angle at which your eyes view the surface. Another interesting rough surface is Earth's atmosphere. You probably don't think of the atmosphere as a surface, but it nonetheless is "rough" to incoming white light. The atmosphere contains molecules of many different sizes, including nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and various pollutants. This assortment scatters the higher energy light waves, the ones we see as blue light. This is why the sky looks blue.

Transmission - If the frequency or energy of the incoming light wave is much higher or much lower than the frequency needed to make the electrons in the material vibrate, then the electrons will not capture the energy of the light, and the wave will pass through the material unchanged. As a result, the material will be transparent to that frequency of light.

Most materials are transparent to some frequencies, but not to others. For example, high frequency light, such as gamma rays and X-rays, will pass through ordinary glass, but lower frequency ultraviolet and infrared light will not. You can read more about what makes glass transparent on this page.

Absorption - In absorption, the frequency of the incoming light wave is at or near the vibration frequency of the electrons in the material. The electrons take in the energy of the light wave and start to vibrate. What happens next depends upon how tightly the atoms hold on to their electrons. Absorption occurs when the electrons are held tightly, and they pass the vibrations along to the nuclei of the atoms. This makes the atoms speed up, collide with other atoms in the material, and then give up as heat the energy they acquired from the vibrations. The absorption of light makes an object dark or opaque to the frequency of the incoming wave. Wood is opaque to visible light. Some materials are opaque to some frequencies of light, but transparent to others. Glass is opaque to ultraviolet light, but transparent to visible light.

Reflection: The atoms in some materials hold on to their electrons loosely. In other words, the materials contain many free electrons that can jump readily from one atom to another within the material. When the electrons in this type of material absorb energy from an incoming light wave, they do not pass that energy on to other atoms. The energized electrons merely vibrate and then send the energy back out of the object as a light wave with the same frequency as the incoming wave. The overall effect is that the light wave does not penetrate deeply into the material. In most metals, electrons are held loosely, and are free to move around, so these metals reflect visible light and appear to be shiny. The electrons in glass have some freedom, though not as much as in metals. To a lesser degree, glass reflects light and appears to be shiny, as well.

A reflected wave always comes off the surface of a material at an angle equal to the angle at which the incoming wave hit the surface.

You can see for yourself that reflected light has the same frequency as the incoming wave. Just look at yourself in a mirror. The colors you see in the mirror's image are the same as those you see when you look down at yourself. The colors of your shirt and hair are the same as reflected in the mirror as they are on you. If this were not true, we would have to rely entirely on other people to tell us what we look like! Refraction - Refraction occurs when the energy of an incoming light wave matches the natural vibration frequency of the electrons in a material. The light wave penetrates deeply into the material, and causes small vibrations in the electrons. The electrons pass these vibrations on to the atoms in the material, and they send out light waves of the same frequency as the incoming wave. But this all takes time. The part of the wave inside the material slows down, while the part of the wave outside the object maintains its original frequency. This has the effect of bending the portion of the wave inside the object toward what is called the normal line, an imaginary straight line that runs perpendicular to the surface of the object. The deviation from the normal line of the light inside the object will be less than the deviation of the light before it entered the object. The amount of bending, or angle of refraction, of the light wave depends on how much the material slows down the light. Diamonds would not be so glittery if they did not slow down incoming light much more than, say, water does. Diamonds have a higher index of refraction than water, which is to say that they slow down light to a greater degree.

One interesting note about refraction is that light of different frequencies, or energies, will bend at slightly different angles. Let's compare violet light and red light when they enter a glass prism. Because violet light has more energy, it takes longer to interact with the glass. As such, it is slowed down to a greater extent than a wave of red light, and will be bent to a greater degree. This accounts for the order of the colors that we see in a rainbow. It is also what gives a diamond the rainbow fringes that make it so pleasing to the eye.

Rainbows in Soap Bubbles

Have you ever wondered why soap bubbles are rainbow colored, or why an oil spill on a wet road has rainbow colors in it? This is what happens when light waves pass through an object with two reflective surfaces. When two incoming light waves of the same frequency strike a thin film of soap, as seen in Figure 5 below, parts of the light waves are reflected from the top surface, while other parts of the light pass through the film and are reflected from the bottom surface. Because the parts of the waves that penetrate the film interact with the film longer, they get knocked out of sync with the parts of the waves reflected by the top surface. Physicists refer to this state as being out of phase. When the two sets of waves strike the photoreceptors in your eyes, they interfere with each other; interference occurs when waves add together or subtract from each other and so form a new wave of a different frequency, or color. Basically, when white light, which is a mixture of different colors, shines on a film with two reflective surfaces, the various reflected waves interfere with each other to form rainbow fringes. The fringes change colors when you change the angle at which you look at the film, because you are changing the path by which the light must travel to reach your eye. If you decrease the angle at which you look at the film, you increase the amount of film the light must travel through for you to see it. This causes greater interference.

Figure 5

Everything we see is a product of, and is affected by, the nature of light. Light is a form of energy that travels in waves. Our eyes are attuned only to those wave frequencies that we call visible light. Intricacies in the wave nature of light explain the origin of color, how light travels, and what happens to light when it encounters different kinds of materials.

References
Hewitt, Paul G., (1999) Conceptual Physics, Third Edition, Scott-ForesmanAddison-Wesley, Inc., Menlo Park, Calif. Serway, Raymond A, and Jerry S. Faughn, (1999) Holt Physics, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Austin, Texas

How Lasers Work

by Matthew Weschler

Lasers show up in an amazing range of products and technologies. You will find them in everything from CD players to dental drills to high-speed metal cutting machines to measuring systems. They all use lasers. But what is a laser? And what makes a laser beam different from the beam of a flashlight?

Photo courtesy NASA

The Optical Damage Threshold test station at NASA Langley Research Center has three lasers: a high-energy pulsed ND:Yag laser, a Ti:sapphire laser and an alignment HeNe laser.

The Basics of an Atom

There are only about 100 different kinds of atoms in the entire universe. Everything we see is made up of these 100 atoms in an unlimited number of combinations. How these atoms are arranged and bonded together determines whether the atoms make up a cup of water, a piece of metal, or the fizz that comes out of your soda can! Atoms are constantly in motion. They continuously vibrate, move and rotate. Even the atoms that make up the chairs that we sit in are moving around. Solids are actually in motion! Atoms can be in different states of excitation. In other words, they can have different energies. If we apply a lot of energy to an atom, it can leave what is called the ground-state energy level and go to an excited level. The level of excitation depends on the amount of energy that is applied to the atom via heat, light, or electricity.

Here is a classic interpretation of what the atom looks like:

An atom, in the simplest model, consists of a nucleus and orbiting electrons.

This simple atom consists of a nucleus (containing the protons and neutrons) and an electron cloud. It s helpful to think of the electrons in this cloud circling the nucleus in many different orbits. Although more modern views of the atom do not depict discrete orbits for the electrons, it can be useful to think of these orbits as the different energy levels of the atom. In other words, if we apply some heat to an atom, we might expect that some of the electrons in the lower-energy orbitals would transition to higher-energy orbitals farther away from the nucleus.

Absorption of energy: An atom absorbs energy in the form of heat, light, or electricity. Electrons may move from a lower-energy orbit to a higher-energy orbit.

This is a highly simplified view of things, but it actually reflects the core idea of how atoms work in terms of lasers. Once an electron moves to a higher-energy orbit, it eventually wants to return to the ground state. When it does, it releases its energy as a photon -- a particle of light. You see atoms releasing energy as photons all the time. For example, when the heating element in a toaster turns bright red, atoms, excited by heat, releasing red photons, cause the red color. When you see a picture on a TV screen, what you are seeing is phosphor atoms, excited by high-speed electrons, emitting different colors of light. Anything that produces light -- fluorescent lights, gas lanterns, incandescent bulbs -- does it through the action of electrons changing orbits and releasing photons.

The Laser/Atom Connection

A laser is a device that controls the way that energized atoms release photons. "Laser" is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, which describes very succinctly how a laser works. Although there are many types of lasers, all have certain essential features. In a laser, the lasing medium is pumped to get the atoms into an excited state. Typically, very intense flashes of light or electrical discharges pump the lasing medium and create a large collection of excited-state atoms (atoms with higher-energy electrons). It is necessary to have a large collection of atoms in the excited state for the laser to work efficiently. In general, the atoms are excited to a level that is two or three levels above the ground state. This increases the degree of population inversion. The population inversion is the number of atoms in the excited state versus the number in ground state. Once the lasing medium is pumped, it contains a collection of atoms with some electrons sitting in excited levels. The excited electrons have energies greater than the more relaxed electrons. Just as the electron absorbed some amount of energy to reach this excited level, it can also release this energy. As the figure below illustrates, the electron can simply relax, and in turn rid itself of some energy. This emitted energy comes in the form of photons (light energy). The photon emitted has a very specific wavelength (color) that depends on the state of the electron's energy when the photon is released. Two identical atoms with electrons in identical states will release photons with identical wavelengths.

Laser light is very different from normal light. Laser light has the following properties: The light released is monochromatic. It contains one specific wavelength of light (one specific color). The wavelength of light is determined by the amount of energy released when the electron drops to a lower orbit. The light released is coherent. It is organized -- each photon moves in step with the others. This means that all of the photons have wave fronts that launch in unison. The light is very directional. A laser light has a very tight beam and is very strong and concentrated. A flashlight, on the other hand, releases light in many directions, and the light is very weak and diffuse.

To make these three properties occur takes something called stimulated emission. This does not occur in your ordinary flashlight -- in a flashlight, all of the atoms release their photons randomly. In stimulated emission, photon emission is organized. The photon that any atom releases has a certain wavelength that is dependent on the energy difference between the excited state and the ground state. If this photon (possessing a certain energy and phase) should encounter another atom that has an electron in the same excited state, stimulated emission can occur. The first photon can stimulate or induce atomic emission such that the subsequent emitted photon (from the second atom) vibrates with the same frequency and direction as the incoming photon. The other key to a laser is a pair of mirrors, one at each end of the lasing medium. Photons, with a very specific wavelength and phase, reflect off the mirrors to travel back and forth through the lasing medium. In the process, they stimulate other electrons to make the downward energy jump and can cause the emission of more photons of the same wavelength and phase. A cascade effect occurs, and soon we have propagated many, many photons of the same wavelength and phase. The mirror at one end of the laser is "half-silvered," meaning it reflects some light and lets some light through. The light that makes it through is the laser light. You can see all of these components in the following figures, which illustrate how a simple ruby laser works. The laser consists of a flash tube (like you would have on a camera), a ruby rod and two mirrors (one half-silvered). The ruby rod is the lasing medium and the flash tube pumps it.

1. The laser in its non-lasing state

2. The flash tube fires and injects light into the ruby rod. The light excites atoms in the ruby.

3. Some of these atoms emit photons.

4. Some of these photons run in a direction parallel to the ruby's axis, so they bounce back and forth off the mirrors. As they pass through the crystal, they stimulate emission in other atoms.

5. Monochromatic, single-phase, columnated light leaves the ruby through the half-silvered mirror -- laser light!

Types of Lasers
There are many different types of lasers. The laser medium can be a solid, gas, liquid or semiconductor. Solid-state lasers have lasing material distributed in a solid matrix (such as the ruby or neodymium: yttrium-aluminum garnet "Yag" lasers). The neodymium-Yag laser emits infrared light at 1,064 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is 1x10-9 meters. Gas lasers (helium and helium-neon, HeNe, are the most common gas lasers) have a primary output of visible red light. CO2 lasers emit energy in the far-infrared, and are used for cutting hard materials. Excimer lasers (the name is derived from the terms excited and dimmers) use reactive gases, such as chlorine and fluorine, mixed with inert gases such as argon, krypton or xenon. When electrically stimulated, a pseudo molecule (dimmer) is produced. Dye lasers use complex organic dyes, such as rhodamine 6G, in liquid solution or suspension as lasing media. They are tunable over a broad range of wavelengths. Semiconductor lasers, sometimes called diode lasers, are not solid-state

lasers. These electronic devices are generally very small and use low power. They may be built into larger arrays, such as the writing source in some laser printers or CD players. A ruby laser (depicted on the previous page) is a solid-state laser and emits at a wavelength of 694 nm. Other lasing mediums can be selected based on the desired emission wavelength (see table below), power needed, and pulse duration. Some lasers are very powerful, such as the CO2 laser, which can cut through steel. The reason that the CO2 laser is so dangerous is because it emits laser light in the infrared and microwave region of the spectrum. Infrared radiation is heat, and this laser basically melts through whatever it is focused upon. Other lasers, such as diode lasers, are very weak and are used in today s pocket laser pointers. These lasers typically emit a red beam of light that has a wavelength between 630 nm and 680 nm. Lasers are utilized in industry and research to do many things, including using intense laser light to excite other molecules to observe what happens to them. Here are some typical lasers and their emission wavelengths: Laser Type Argon fluoride (UV) Krypton fluoride (UV) Nitrogen (UV) Argon (blue) Argon (green) Helium neon (green) Helium neon (red) Rhodamine 6G dye (tunable) Ruby (CrAlO3) (red) Nd:Yag (NIR) Carbon dioxide (FIR) Wavelength (nm) 193 248 337 488 514 543 633 570-650 694 1064 10600

Laser Classifications
Lasers are classified into four broad areas depending on the potential for causing biological damage. When you see a laser, it should be labeled with one of these four class designations: Class I - These lasers cannot emit laser radiation at known hazard levels.

Class I.A. - This is a special designation that applies only to lasers that are "not intended for viewing," such as a supermarket laser scanner. The upper power limit of Class I.A. is 4.0 mW. Class II - These are low-power visible lasers that emit above Class I levels but at a radiant power not above 1 mW. The concept is that the human aversion reaction to bright light will protect a person. Class IIIA - These are intermediate-power lasers (cw: 1-5 mW), which are hazardous only for intrabeam viewing. Most pen-like pointing lasers are in this class. Class IIIB - These are moderate-power lasers. Class IV - These are high-power lasers (cw: 500 mW, pulsed: 10 J/cm2 or the diffuse reflection limit), which are hazardous to view under any condition (directly or diffusely scattered), and are a potential fire hazard and a skin hazard. Significant controls are required of Class IV laser facilities.