Lasers and Applications (U04274)

? Credit Points : 10 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : PHY-4-Lasers

Lasers are now commonplace throughout many aspects of everyday life, e.g. in CD players, telecoms, industrial processing, spectroscopy and many bioscience applications. The course starts with a review of the basic physics of optical cavities and the spontaneous/stimulated emission from materials leading to laser amplifiers and oscillators. Examples of atomic, ionic and molecular gas lasers are presented including systems for continuous wave and pulsed beam operation. The optical properties of laser cavities, and the optics of Gaussian beam are discussed along with the basic structure, operation and optical characteristics of the important semi-conductor lasers. Finally a series of laser applications in spectroscopy, advanced microscope imaging including scanning confocal, multi-photon, Raman and CARS imaging.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : At least 70 points accrued in courses of SCQF level 9 or 10 drawn from Schedule Q, which must include Diffraction Physics, Quantum Mechanics (U01355) and Statistical Mechanics (U01357). Prior or concurrent attendance at Atomic & Molecular Physics (U01404) is desirable.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Undergraduate (School of Physics and Astronomy), (School of Physics and Astronomy, Schedule Q)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 4th year

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
12/01/2009	10:00	11:00	Lecture Room 5326, JCMB	KB

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Monday	10:00	10:50	KB
Lecture	Thursday	10:00	10:50	KB

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

On completion of this course a student should be able to demonstrate understanding of and be able to solve problems on:
1) absorption and spontaneous and stimulated emission in two level system, the effects of homogeneous and inhomogeneous line broadening, and the conditions for laser amplification,
2) operations of the Fabry-Perot cavity including mode separation and line-widths, laser gain conditions, gain clamping in both homogeneous and inhomogeneous line broadened media,
3) the four-level laser system, the simple homogeneous laser and its output behaviour and optimal operating conditions,
4) spectral properties of a single longitudinal mode, mode locked laser operation, schemes for active and passive mode locking in real laser system,
5) operations and basic properties of the most common laser types, He-Ne, Argon-ion, and carbon-dioxide, ruby, titanium sapphire, neodymium YAG and glass, knowledge of other main laser types,
6) matrix optics of the laser cavity and stability conditions,
7) basics of Gaussian beam in laser cavity and optical properties of laser output, design of stable laser cavities using Gaussian beam optics, the ABCD law for Gaussian beams,
8) operations and types of semi-conductor laser diodes, simplified planar waveguide model, optical output of laser diodes and basic optics for beam control, optical properties of the light output and basic applications.
9) understanding of spectroscopy applications of lasers including Raman and Fourier transform spectroscopy and their role in atomic and molecular analysis,
10) understanding of a range of modern active laser microscope imaging techniques, in particular, scanning confocal, multi-photon, scanning Raman and CARS.