Optics, Lasers & Photonics

Laser Systems

LASER stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. We all know that light is an electromagnetic wave. Each wave has its own brightness and colour, and vibrates at a certain angle, called polarization. This theory also applies to laser light but it is more parallel than any other light source. Every part of the beam has almost exact same direction and so the beam will diverge very little. With a good laser an object at a distance of 1 km can be illuminated with a dot about 60 mm in radius. As it is so parallel, it can be focused to very small diameters where concentration of light energy becomes so high that you can drill, cut, or turn with the ray. It is also possible to illuminate and examine very tiny details with the lasers, thus it is used in surgical applications and CD players as also. It can also be made very monochromic, thus only one light wavelength is present. This is not the instance with the ordinary light sources. White light contains all colours in the spectrum, but even a coloured light, such as a red LED contains a repeated interval of red wavelengths.