Liquid And Dye Lasers

Presented by:Kumar Ashish

Introduction
A liquid laser is a laser in which gain medium is a liquid solutions (typically in a rare earth metal ions solution) as the gain medium . A dye laser is a laser in which gain medium is a dye (typically in a liquid solution) as the gain medium . Most liquid laser uses a chelate based rare earth metal ion solution to stop the ions to maintain the excited state necessary for population inversion. Most laser dyes are based on organic molecules( eg. Rhodamine 6G) used in liquid form as solutions, although solid laser dyes and vapour dyes exist. A wide range of emission wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the nearinfrared region can be addressed with these laser. The solution is intensely coloured owing to the very strong absorption from the ground electronic state S0 to the first excited singlet state S1.

Working
In a liquid laser, the dye solution is held in a cuvette. One highly reflective and one partially reflective mirrors are placed on either side of the cuvette to make a cavity. When the dye fluoresces, after a short pulse of exciting light, some of the fluorescent light bounces off the mirrors back into the cuvette. The reflected light can then bring about stimulated emission. If the stimulated emission is intense enough laser emission will result, as molecules rapidly drop back into their ground states. Each time a beam of light passes through the excited solution it "gains" intensity through spontaneous emission. Sometimes one pass is sufficient, sometimes several passes are necessary to build enough intensity to produce enough stimulate demission for laser action. The "gain" of the system is therefore an important parameter. Two important factors that influence the gain are the upper state lifetime and any competing processes that depopulate the upper state without emission of a photon (non radiative processes). It is best to maximize the former and minimize the later. Only certain solutions and dyes have long enough excited state lifetimes.

Figure:-transition of electrons during the lasing action of liquid dye lasers

 The ground states of most molecules are singlets, so that absorption of light produces excited singlet states. Spontaneous emission then results in fluorescence. However, it is possible through a process called intersystem crossing for molecules to switch into their excited triplet states. Spontaneous emission from a triplet state occurs very slowly, by comparison with fluorescent transitions, and is called phosphorescence. Molecular fluorescence is responsible for dye laser emission. The wavelength of laser emission is limited by the range of fluorescence wavelengths. To choose a dye, we then pick a dye with its fluorescence emission spectrum near the desired laser wavelength. We must also choose a dye with a long lived first excited singlet state, so that a population inversion is easy to build up. The dye should also be easily excited by available light sources. Xenon lamps are commonly used to excite, or "pump", dye lasers.

Features of Dye Lasers

They exhibit a broad gain bandwidth, which allows for broad wavelength tunability and also ultrashort pulse generation with passive mode locking. Upper-state lifetimes are typically of the order of 1 ns. This means that dyes are not suitable for Q switching with continuous or long-pulse pumping. However, intense dye laser pulses can be obtained with pulsed pumping, using a Q-switched pump laser or a flash lamp. The gain per unit length can be fairly high (order of 103 cm1), particularly for pulsed pumping. The power conversion efficiency is typically between 10% and 30% for laser pumping, and possibly lower for flashlamp pumping. Pulsed dye lasers may be pumped by flash lamps or other pulsed lasers (N2, excimer, Nd:YAG).Dye lasers are usually pumped by Ar ion lasers. The dye solution must be circulated to prevent overheating and degradation, and to replace molecules in the triplet state, T1

Tuning the wavelength: Usually a tuning element, such as a diffraction grating or prism, is incorporated in the cavity. This allows only light in a very narrow frequency range to resonate in the cavity and be emitted as laser emission.

By controlling the value of Q for maximum intensity we can have wavelength which will be reflected back and propagated in the cavity.

Properties of liquid-dye laser

Good laser crystal are very difficult to obtain due to high optical strain, defects, imperfections and internal damage while homogenous liquid of high optical cavity are easily available. Liquid-dye lasers doesnt crack or shatter if output power becomes high. Liquid dye lasers have high thermal expansion coefficient which affects its refractive index. Ions are easily transferred back to their ground state in the solution Cooling and recirculating is required to prevent the solution from being bleached or overheating.

The Neodymium:YAG laser

YAG = yttrium aluminium garnet (Y3Al5O12) Lasing can be induced between energy levels of Nd3+ embedded in YAG. Other matrices are yttrium lithium fluoride (YLF), YVO4 (yttrium orthovanadate), and glass Nd:YAG is a 4-level laser:

Nonlinear processes are used to produce higher-order harmonics:

0 (at 1064 nm) is termed the fundamental 1 = 20 (at 532 nm) is the first harmonic 2 = 30 (at 355 nm) is the second harmonic 3 = 40 (at 266 nm) is the third harmonic

System is pumped optically with a Kr arc lamp (CW operation) or a flash lamp for higher power pulsed operation. Laser diodes are now commonly used as the pump source owing to their high efficiency and good match to the absorption bands of Nd:YAG.
Output power range from mW to 100 W (CW); pulse energies range from 0.1 J to 100 J, giving peak powers of up to 100 MW!

The Nd:YAG is very common as a pump laser (for e.g., dye lasers) and as a source of high power pulses in the visible and ultraviolet.

The titanium sapphire (Ti:sapphire) laser

Ti:sapphire is solid-state laser tuneable over a very broad spectral range (670 1100 nm) The gain medium is a sapphire crystal (Al2O3) doped with 0.1% Ti2O3.
The Ti:sapphire is a 4-level laser with emission between different vibronic energy levels of the Ti3+ ion. The system may be either CW or pulsed. Pumping is usually by Ar ion or Nd:YAG laser to match the absorption band at 400 600 nm. The output wavelength is between 600-1100nm. A major advantage of the Ti:sapphire system is that mode-locking is possible to produce a train of extremely short pulses allowing ultrafast (10-13 10-14 s) studies of chemical processes.