Continuing the series on lasers. In the first part, I went fast over plenty of concepts and left others on the side because they were not necessary to get a global understanding of lasers. Here, I want to get a little deeper in some specific concepts. I want to talk more in details about the gain medium of a laser and why population inversion is a vital concept. For now, I have been relatively simple on the gain medium characteristics… I have considered a simple material with two atomic energy levels, and I have been assuming that the transition is …
Tag: amplification
An introduction on laser physics
So I want to start a series of posts that will focus mostly on lasers, what they are, how they work, what are the most important elements, etc… It can still evolve. Some prerequisites first: To fully understand what I will write, here, it definitely helps to be familiar with a few concepts and bases from electromagnetism and optics, obviously. I’ll try to explain these concepts along the way of course. Nevertheless, even if you don’t have the necessary background, keep reading. I’ll try to keep it simple and limit the mathematics to a minimum. It’s no surprise that lasers …