Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/HTML-CSS/jax.js
Skip to main content
Library homepage
 

Text Color

Text Size

 

Margin Size

 

Font Type

Enable Dyslexic Font
Chemistry LibreTexts

Lasers

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Laser is a type of light source which has the unique characteristics of directionality, brightness, and monochromaticity. The goal of this module is to explain how a laser operates (stimulated or spontaneous emission), describe important components, and give some examples of types of lasers and their applications.

  • Gas Lasers
    Gas lasers have lasing media that are made-up of one or a mixture of gases or vapors. Gas lasers can be classified in terms of the type of transitions that lead to their operation: atomic or molecular. The most common of all gas lasers is the helium-neon (He-Ne) laser.
  • Laser Theory
    There are four laser demands: population inversion, laser threshold, energy source and active medium.
  • Overview of Lasers
    LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Laser is a type of light source which has the unique characteristics of directionality, brightness, and monochromaticity. The goal of this module is to explain how a laser operates (stimulated or spontaneous emission), describe important components, and give some examples of types of lasers and their applications.
  • Semiconductor and Solid-state lasers
    In both solid-state and semiconductor lasers the lasing medium is a solid. Aside from this similarity, however, these two laser types are very different from each other. In the case of the solid-state lasers the lasing species is typically an impurity that resides in a solid host, a crystal of some sort. The crystal modifies some of the quantized energy levels of the impurity, but still the lasing is almost atomic - similar to gas lasers.


Lasers is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

  • Was this article helpful?

Support Center

How can we help?