Gas laser

A gas laser is a laser whose resonator is filled with gas . It serves as an active medium for generating high radiation powers in a wide, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared reaching spectrum .

The laser is usually pumped by electrical gas discharge; the discharge currents range from a few 10 ⁻³  A with continuous excitation to 10 ³  A with impulse excitation . Optical pumping and pumping with microwaves are rarer. Another possibility of excitation is pumping by chemical reaction of the active medium. The gases are located inside a laser tube at gas pressures between 10 and a few 10 ⁶ Pa with high-pressure lasers .

The first gas laser, a helium-neon laser , was developed in 1960 by Ali Javan and William R. Bennett . At the moment gas lasers are being displaced from their classic fields of application, particularly by solid-state lasers and semiconductor lasers .

Types

Depending on the active medium , gas lasers can be divided into the following groups:

Nitrogen laser

• Molecular or neutral atom lasers, e.g. E.g .: carbon dioxide laser ( CO ₂ ), carbon monoxide laser ( CO), nitrogen laser ( N ₂ ), helium-neon laser (He-Ne)
• (Noble gas) ion lasers, e.g. E.g .: argon-ion laser (Ar ⁺ )
• Metal vapor laser , e.g. E.g .: copper vapor laser , helium-cadmium laser
• Excimer lasers which mostly consist of a noble gas halide (such as XeF * or ArF *)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A. Javan, WR Bennet, DR Herriot: Population Inversion and Continuous Optical Maser Oscillation in a Gas Discharge Containing a He-Ne Mixture. In: Phys. Rev. Lett. tape 6 , 1961, pp. 106-110 , doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevLett.6.106 .
2. ↑ Markus Werner Sigrist: Laser: Theory, Types and Applications . Springer, 2018, ISBN 978-3-662-57514-7 , pp. 223 .

Web link

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