ND: YAG Laser (Yttrium Aluminium Garnet) : (J. E. Geusic Et Al. at Bell Laboratories in 1964)

Nd: YAG laser (Yttrium Aluminium Garnet)
(J. E. Geusic et al. at Bell Laboratories in 1964)
Active Medium : Nd YAG ( Nd doped – Y3Al5O12)
Y3+ and Nd 3+
Nd3+ pumped by
n=1.816 ( =1.06m ); Absorption coefficient =4.3 cm-1
Optical Source : Krypton –high pressure

Or
Xenon- moderate pressure
Optical resonator : Mirrors

The length of the Nd: YAG laser rod various
from 5cm to 10cm depending on the power of the
laser and its diameter is generally 6 to 9 mm.
The laser rod and a linear flash lamp are
housed in a elliptical reflector cavity
Since the rod and the lamp are located at the
foci of the ellipse, the light emitted by the lamp is
effectively coupled to the rod.
The ends of the rod are polished and made
optically flat and parallel.
Contd.
•The optical cavity is formed either by silvering
the two ends of the rod or by using two external
reflecting mirrors.
• One mirror is made hundred percent reflecting

while the other mirror is left slightly transmitting
to draw the output
• The system is cooled by either air or water

circulation.
OUTPUT CHARACTERISTICS :
The laser output is in the form of pulses with
higher repetition rate
Xenon flash lamps are used for pulsed output.
Nd: YAG laser can be operated in CW mode

using tungsten-halide incandescent lamp for
optical pumping.
Continuous output powers of over 1KW are

obtained.
Life time- 258s
730 nm
808 nm
 they have surgical applications (e.g skin disorder).
 they are used material processing such as drilling, spot
welding and marking.
 They are used as pumping for tunable visible light lasers.
 They have applications in military such as including range
finders and target designators.
 Research applications such as Raman spectroscopy,
remote sensing, mass spectrometry.
Gas Laser : Helium-Neon laser (He-Ne laser)
1st demonstrated by Ai Javan in 1961
Four level system
Operation wavelength: 632.8 nm
Pump source: electrical discharge
Gain medium : ratio 10:1 mixture of helium and neon gases
Ne is the active center - He is helping
Mixture gas kept at 10 torr (1 mmHg- 0.1mmHg

in 80 cm long 5.5 mm dia tube
-0.013 atmosp)
Few kilovolts applied (10 kV) – discharge

DC Current or AC
e- comes out & made inelastic collision with He

He exited states - 1S0 and 3S1 with 19.81 eV and 20.61 eV
lifetime of these level are low
He Collide with Ne having identical energy state

(1S0 and 3S1 very close to 3s and 2s levels of Ne)
[ or Ne E6 & E4 coincide with He – F3 & F2 ]
- Resonant transfer of energy
hence Ne – exited
3 types of transitions
e1 + He  He* + e2
He* + Ne  Ne* + He
He(1S0) + e → He*(23S1)
He*(23S1) + Ne1S0 → He(1S0) + Ne*2s2 + ΔE
He*(21S) + Ne1S0 + ΔE → He(1S0) + Ne*3s2
Paschen’s
noations are used
Level 2p decay is
rapid to 1s in 10-8
sec
much faster than

between 2s to 2p
Population
inversion is
achieved between
3s to 2p
He-Ne laser
Infra-red
3S(2p55s)
2S0(1s2s) 3p(2p54p)
2S(2p54s)
2S1(1s2s) visible
2p(2p53p)
1S(2p53s) Spontaneous emission
Collision with wall
1S1(1s2)
1  3.39 μm 2  0.6328 μm 3  1.15 μm

The He-Ne laser is a relatively low power device with an output in the
visible red portion of the spectrum.
The most common wavelength produced by He-Ne lasers is 632.8nm,

although two lower power (1.152µm and 3.391µm) infrared
wavelengths can be produced if desired.
Majority of He-Ne lasers generate less than 10m watt of power, but
some can be obtained commercially with up to 50m watts of power.
Applications
Many schools / colleges / universities use this type of laser in their
science programs and experiments.
used in super market checkout counters to read bar codes and QR code
used by newspapers for reproducing transmitted photographs.
use as an alignment tool.
used in Guns for targeting.
Molecular Gas Laser
Carbon dioxide laser (CO2) - Developed by CKN Patel (1964)
Symmetric mode of Vibration

(Symmetric stretching frequency
h=0.1632 eV )
Asymmetric stretching
frequency
(h=0.276 eV)
Bending mode
(h=0.078 eV)
bending frequency
Also molecule rotate
Quantized rotational energy

level possible
CO2 molecule are characterised by vibrational and rotational level apart from
Electronic levels
Energy difference between electronic levels -> visible and ultraviolet

Energy difference between vibrational levels -> infrared
Energy difference between rotational levels -> far infrared
electronic Vibrational Rotational

Carbon dioxide laser (CO2)
several meters of length (5 m)

several centimeter of dia (3.5 cm)
AC power supply (50 Hz) or DC
metallic mirror of gold for high power
Water cooled or air cooled
efficiency 30 %
Construction
100% He+N2+CO2
Partial
reflecting To vacuum pump
reflector
mirror
NaCl
Window
Good transmission
250nm – 16μm
Working
CO2 and two additional gas N2 and He (1:4:5)
0.33 torr, 1.2 torr and 7 torr
N2 plays like He in He-Ne laser
N2 + e1  N2* + e2
N2 + CO2  CO2 * + N2
CO2 * + h  CO2 + 2(h)

Asymmetric
Symmetric 002
bending
0.4 ms
001 ’’=1
10.6 m
100 9.6 m
020
010
000
’’=0
CO2 N2
characteristic frequency for the symmetric stretch mode is 1337cm-1
and for the bending mode it is 1255 and 667cm-1.
asymmetric stretch mode, it is much higher 2349cm-1.
001 energy level of CO2 - close
exited level of N2
population of 001 increases rapidly

than lower levels 100 & 010
powerful transition at normal temperature

10.6 m ( 10600 nm ) - IR region
operating temperature – play role in o/p power
Contamination (CO & O2) have some effect
He is used for cooling and also for keeping lower

population in lower level
O/p laser power 10kW

Applications
• Because of the high power levels available, CO2 lasers are frequently used in industrial
applications for cutting and welding.
• surgical uses because water (which makes up most biological tissue) absorbs this
frequency of light very well. E.g laser surgery and skin resurfacing
• Researchers in Israel are experimenting using CO2 lasers to weld human tissue, as an
alternative to traditional sutures.
• The common plastic poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) absorbs IR light in the 2.8–
25 µm wavelength band, so CO2 lasers have been used in recent years for fabricating
microfluidic devices from it, with channel widths of a few hundred micrometers.
• CO2 lasers are used in the Silex process to enrich uranium.
• The Soviet Polyus was designed to use a megawatt carbon-dioxide laser as an orbit to
orbit weapon to destroy SDI satellites.
DYE LASERS
P. P. Sorokin and F. P. Schäfer in 1966
Liquid laser
Active medium – Organic dye (dissolved in water, ethyl alcohol,

methyl alcohol, ethylene glycol)
Pump source: other lasers or flash lamp.
Various dyes - Scintillator dyes (wavelength 320 -400 nm ; ultraviolet )

- Coumarin dyes (wavelength 400 – 500 nm ; blue and
green)
- Xanthene dyes (wavelength 500 – 700 nm ; visible)
- Polymethine dyes (wavelength 700- 1500 nm ; red and
infra red)
DYE LASERS
Polyatomic organic
molecules containing
conjugated double
bonds
Electrons move freely
within the whole chain
Can be described as a
free electron in one
dimensional potential
well
DYE LASERS
Schematic diagram of a dye laser
A dye laser can be considered to be basically a four-level system.

The energy absorbed by the dye creates a population inversion, moving
the
electrons into an excited state.
Construction
A dye laser consists of an organic dye mixed with a solvent. A
high energy source of light (a fast discharge flashlamp or an
external laser) is needed to 'pump' the liquid beyond its lasing
threshold.
 Mirrors are used to oscillate the light produced by the dye’s
fluorescence, which is amplified with each pass through the
liquid. The output mirror is normally around 80% reflective, while
all other mirrors are usually more than 99.9% reflective.
The dye cell is usually side-pumped, with flashlamps running
parallel to the dye cell in a reflector cavity. The reflector cavity is
often water cooled, to prevent thermal shock in the dye caused
by the large amounts of near-infrared radiation which the
flashlamp produces.
The dye solution is usually circulated at high speeds, to avoid
triplet absorption and to decrease degradation of the dye.
 A prism or diffraction grating is usually mounted in the beam
Operation
The incoming light excites the dye molecules into the state of
being ready to emit stimulated radiation, the singlet state.
In this state, the molecules emit light via fluorescence, and the
dye is transparent to the lasing wavelength. Within a microsecond,
or less, the molecules will change to their triplet state.
In the triplet state, light is emitted via phosphorescence, and the
molecules absorb the lasing wavelength, making the dye opaque.
Liquid dyes also have an extremely high lasing threshold.
Flashlamp pumped lasers need a flash with an extremely short
duration, to deliver the large amounts of energy necessary to bring
the dye past threshold before triplet absorption overcomes singlet
emission.
Dye lasers with an external pump laser can direct enough
energy of the proper wavelength into the dye with a relatively
small amount of input energy, but the dye must be circulated at
high speeds to keep the triplet molecules out of the beam path.
DYE LASERS
There are two types energy
level structures
Singlet state – total spin of

each
level is zero
Triplet state – total spin is

‘One’
Number of vibrational level

Difference between
Each vibrational level consists
Vibrational level - 1500 /cm several rotational level
rotational - 15 /cm
DYE LASERS
Consider as four level laser

Dye lasers are used in many applications including:
astronomy (as laser guide stars)

atomic vapour laser isotope separation
manufacturing
medicine
- to treat port-wine stains and other blood vessel disorders,
scars and kidney stones
- for tattoo removal
spectroscopy
-to study the absorption and emission spectra of various
materials
DYE LASERS
Selection rule: ∆S = 0 Losses:
Intersystem crossing
 S0 → S1 allowed  S1 → T1
Vibrational and Phosphoresence
 T1 → S0
rotational levels Absorption
unresolved in liquid  S1 → S 2
 T1 → T 2
Fluorescence emission
 S1 → S0
En = h2N2/8mL2
DYE LASERS
Since organic dyes tend to decompose under the influence of light, the dye
solution is normally circulated from a large reservoir.
The dye solution can be flowing through a cuvette, i.e., a glass container, or be
as a dye jet, i.e., as a sheet-like stream in open air from a specially-shaped
nozzle. With a dye jet, one avoids reflection losses from the glass surfaces and
contamination of the walls of the cuvette. These advantages come at the cost of
a more-complicated alignment.
Liquid dyes have very high gain as laser media. The beam needs to make only a
few passes through the liquid to reach full design power, and hence, the high
transmittance of the output coupler. The high gain also leads to high losses,
because reflection from the dye cell walls, or flashlamp reflector, will dramatically
reduce the amount of energy available to the beam. Pump cavities are often
coated, anodized, or otherwise made of a material that will not reflect at the
lasing wavelength while reflecting at the pump wavelength.[10]

ND: YAG Laser (Yttrium Aluminium Garnet) : (J. E. Geusic Et Al. at Bell Laboratories in 1964)

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What are the different types of lasers described in the document?

What are the different types of lasers described in the document?

How does a Nd:YAG laser work?

How does a Nd:YAG laser work?

Nd: YAG laser (Yttrium Aluminium Garnet)

(J. E. Geusic et al. at Bell Laboratories in 1964)

Active Medium : Nd YAG ( Nd doped – Y3Al5O12)

n=1.816 ( =1.06m ); Absorption coefficient =4.3 cm-1

Optical Source : Krypton –high pressure

Optical resonator : Mirrors

• One mirror is made hundred percent reflecting

• The system is cooled by either air or water

Xenon flash lamps are used for pulsed output.

Nd: YAG laser can be operated in CW mode

Continuous output powers of over 1KW are

Mixture gas kept at 10 torr (1 mmHg- 0.1mmHg

Few kilovolts applied (10 kV) – discharge

e- comes out & made inelastic collision with He

He Collide with Ne having identical energy state

- Resonant transfer of energy

much faster than

1S(2p53s) Spontaneous emission

Collision with wall

1  3.39 μm 2  0.6328 μm 3  1.15 μm

The most common wavelength produced by He-Ne lasers is 632.8nm,

Symmetric mode of Vibration

Also molecule rotate

Quantized rotational energy

Energy difference between electronic levels -> visible and ultraviolet

electronic Vibrational Rotational

several meters of length (5 m)

AC power supply (50 Hz) or DC

metallic mirror of gold for high power

Water cooled or air cooled

CO2 and two additional gas N2 and He (1:4:5)

0.33 torr, 1.2 torr and 7 torr

N2 plays like He in He-Ne laser

CO2 * + h  CO2 + 2(h)

population of 001 increases rapidly

powerful transition at normal temperature

operating temperature – play role in o/p power

Contamination (CO & O2) have some effect

He is used for cooling and also for keeping lower

O/p laser power 10kW

Active medium – Organic dye (dissolved in water, ethyl alcohol,

Pump source: other lasers or flash lamp.

Various dyes - Scintillator dyes (wavelength 320 -400 nm ; ultraviolet )

Schematic diagram of a dye laser

A dye laser can be considered to be basically a four-level system.

Singlet state – total spin of

Triplet state – total spin is

Number of vibrational level

Consider as four level laser

astronomy (as laser guide stars)

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