Basic Laser Operation LASER is the acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

In a medium therev are mainly three types of transitions between the different energy levels. They are Spontaneous absorption, Spontaneous emmision and Stimulated emission. Whenever a photon is incident on the medium the electrons in the lower energy levels get excited and jump to the higher energy levels absorbing energy from the incident photons. Some electrons from the higher energy comes down emitting photons. There is yet another transition where a photon collides with an electron in the higher energy state and obeying the laws of conservation of momentum these electrons come don to the lower energy levels emitting potons , which has the same phase , polarization, direction and obviously same frequency as the photon colliding with it.So a " clone" of the photon , which had collided with it has been produced. The probability density Pst , that this process occurs in the volume V is governed by the formula

where =the transition cross section . It is a narrow function of frequency centered about the resonance frequency.

Another phenomena which is equally important for the LASER action is the population inversion phenomena. Generally materials which support laser actions contains an enegy level called the metastable energy level where the lifetime of the eletrons are more than in the other energy levels. Due to this difference in the lifetimes the electrons from higher enegy levels when fall down to these levels ,they ppulate this level more than the other levels . This is called the POPULATION INVERSION. The photons colliding with these electrons produces "clone" photons due to stimulated emission and thus a surge of "clone" photons are produced. This produces a highly coherent beam of light.

Principle Of Laser Action

A pump energy is given to pump the electrons from the lower energy levels to the higher enegy levels say from level 1 to 3. These electrons undergoes non radiative decay and come down to the energy level , level 2,having the more lifetime. Thus population inversion occurs. A photon having the energy equal to E2-E1 , collides with these electrons and stimulated emission occurs giving amplified coherent laser beam. Theshold of the laser. The laser threshold is the condition when stimulated emission exceeds the spontneous emission of the laser. Below the threshold, the laser's output power rises slowly with increasing excitation. Above threshold, the slope of power vs. excitation is orders of magnitude greater. The line width of the laser's emission also becomes orders of magnitude smaller above the threshold than it is below. Reason for the laser threshold The laser therhold happens only when the small signal gain coefficient exceeds the loss coefficient, i.e

The small signal gain coefficient is proportional to the equilibrium population density called N0, whih again epends on the pumping rate R. Thus a minimum rate of the photons is required to start the lasing process.In order to have the lasing process N0>Nt ,where Nt is the threshold population difference, which is determines the Rt,the threshold pumping rate, the threshold for initiation of the laser oscillation. Thus there is a minimum no of photons that are needed to start with the lasr process. This minimum no of photons is determined by I/hf, where f is the frequency of the radiation and I the current. Thus in the LI curve we have got a threshold of the current. If the current is above this then the laser starts working . Description of the experiment Laser diode circuit In the laser diode circuit given above, the pot varies the output current from the LM317 by varying the resistance. The adjustable otput from the regulator sets the voltage across the capacitor. This voltage determines the current flowing through the resistance.This current should be above a threshold current so as to start the lasing process, as shown by the diagram. Photodetector circuit The laser current falls on the photodetector diode and generates a photodetector current. No current enters the input of the opamp.The current passes through the resistance and generates the voltage at the output, V0 So this voltage is proportional to the cureent that enters the laser diode .

The graph of the Voltage V0 vs the current I that enters the laser diode is given. It clearly shows that a threshold is necessary to generate the voltage V0.