2010

RUBY LASER

SUBMITTED TO: Dr. KAILASH JUGLAN

ANU DHAWAN ROLL NO: OE184A04 4/15/2010 REGD.ID:10804482

Introduction
Ruby is an aluminum oxide crystal in which some of the aluminum atoms have been replaced with chromium atoms. Chromium gives ruby its characteristic red color and is responsible for the lasing behavior of the crystal. Chromium atoms absorb green and blue light and emit or reflect only red light. For a ruby laser, a crystal of ruby is formed into a cylinder. A fully reflecting mirror is placed on one end and a partially reflecting mirror on the other. A high-intensity lamp is spiraled around the ruby cylinder to provide a flash of white light that triggers the laser action. The green and blue wavelengths in the flash excite electrons in the chromium atoms to a higher energy level. Upon returning to their normal state, the electrons emit their characteristic ruby-red light. The mirrors reflect some of this light back and forth inside the ruby crystal, stimulating other excited chromium atoms to produce more red light , until the light pulse builds up to high power and drains the energy stored in the crystal. The optically pumped, solid-state laser uses sapphire as the host lattice and chromium as the active ion. The emission takes place in the red portion of the spectrum

Design
The ruby laser is a three level solid state laser. The active laser medium (laser gain/amplification medium) is a synthetic ruby rod that is energized through optical pumping, typically by a xenon flash lamp. In early examples, the rod's ends had to be polished with great precision, such that the ends of the rod were flat to within a quarter of a wavelength of the output light and parallel to each other within a few seconds of arc. The finely polished ends of the rod were silvered: one end completely, the other only partially. The rod with its reflective ends then acts as a Fabry Prot etalon (or a Gires-Tournois etalon). Modern lasers often use rods with ends cut and polished at Brewster's angle instead. This eliminates the reflections from the ends of the rod; external dielectric mirrors then are used to form the optical cavity. Curved mirrors are typically used to relax the alignment tolerances.

History
A ruby laser is a solid-state laser that uses a synthetic ruby crystal as its gain medium. The first working laser was a ruby laser made by Theodore H. "Ted" Mailman at Hughes Research Laboratories on May 16, 1960. Ruby lasers produce pulses of visible light at a wavelength of 694.3 nm, which is a deep red color. Typical ruby laser pulse lengths are on the order of a millisecond.

The Parts
The picture below shows a ruby laser. It is cut in half so you can see what's inside. The first working laser was a ruby laser, and it was invented in 1960. The shiny red tube at the centre is a ruby crystal. That's where the laser beam will come from when the laser is switched on.

If you look closely at the picture, you will see that there are two round mirrors, one attached to each end of the ruby crystal. The mirror at the far end is called a "fully reflecting mirror". All the light reaching this type of mirror bounces back off it again. The mirror at the near end of the crystal is called a "partially reflecting mirror". This type of mirror reflects most of the light, but some of the light can pass through it. A tube made of quartz is coiled around the ruby crystal. It is called a "quartz flash tube", and each end of it is connected to a power supply, forming an electric circuit. In the picture above, we made the quartz flash tube see-through, so you can get a better view of the crystal. All of these parts are inside an aluminum cylinder. The cylinder is highly polished, like a curved mirror.

Switching it on
When the electric power supply is switched on, a current flow through the quartz flash tube and it gives off a very bright burst of light. The reflecting cylinder around the flash tube helps to focus all that light onto the ruby crystal.

What happens inside the crystal?

Like everything else, the ruby crystal is made of atoms. A real atom is so tiny; you can't see it, even with a very powerful microscope. They are much bigger in this picture so you can see them:

The light from the quartz flash tube hits the atoms in the crystal. Some of the atoms absorb the light, giving them more energy. They are said to be in a "higher energy level". To return to their previous energy level, they must get rid of the extra energy they got from the light. They do this by emitting a tiny particle of light called a "photon". Scientists call this process "stimulated emission of radiation" because the atoms are stimulated by the bright light, causing the emission of a photon of light, and light is a type of radiation. The next picture shows the atoms emitting photons.

Of course, in reality photons are a lot smaller than those in the picture. Photons are even smaller than the stuff that makes up atoms!

Where do the photons go?

When they are emitted from the atoms, the photons of light shoot off in all directions.

Sometimes they pass close to another atom, and when that happens, the other atom might emit a photon too.

And if the photon from the other atom passes yet another atom, that atom might also emit a photon. So the number of photons increases very quickly, and the inside of the laser becomes very bright and hot. A water cooling system keeps it from overheating.

How is the laser beam formed?

When the photons of light hit the mirrors, they are reflected back off them. Many of the photons will bounce back and forth between the mirrors, passing atoms on the way, and causing yet more photons to be emitted. Scientists call this "light amplification", because the light (made of photons) is amplified (made brighter). With so many photons whizzing back and forth between the mirrors, many of them escape from the crystal through the partially reflective mirror at the front. We have shown some of these photons in the picture below.

The laser beam is made of many millions of these photons, escaping from the crystal through the front mirror.

The whole process, from flicking the switch to the laser beam appearing, happens in the blink of an eye.

Laser construction
Ruby is a crystal of Al2O3, a small number of whose Al atoms are replaced by Cr+3 ions. A high intensity helical flash lamp surrounding the ruby rod is used as light source to raise Cr atoms from state E1 to E3.

The structure of a ruby laser can vary from a simple design with integral mirrors deposited directly onto the faces of the rod, to a complex design featuring a plethora of optical elements, such as Q-switches, mode-limiting apertures, and single frequency selectors within the cavity. The optical train of a relatively complex ruby laser, a double-pulse ruby laser used for holography. The cavity resonator itself consists of a dielectric high reflector and an etalon for an output coupler, the etalon being used to ensure singlefrequency operation of the oscillator. Whereas the etalons function as transmission filters with transmission peaks corresponding to the FSR of the etalon, this particular etalon is a reflector, reflecting wavelengths separated by the FSR. In that respect, it simply replaces the broadband OC normally used in a laser. The single-frequency operation of this laser increases the coherence length to about 10 m, desirable when using this laser as a source for holography. Aside from frequency stability, spatial quality is also ensured through the use of a variable aperture in the optical train, which serves to limit the transverse mode of the laser to TEM00 mode.

The ruby laser is a cylindrical rod with parallel, flat reflecting ends. One end is partially reflecting. The flash light is attached with the high voltage. The laser is Q-switched and uses a Pockets cell EO modulator to generate fast pulses. For this laser, two pulses are produced in rapid succession by opening the Q-switch twice. An EO switch is used since it is faster than an AO modulator and allows true modulation: It can be opened partially, allowing the first pulse to be produced without draining the entire energy of the rod. Energy left in the rod is then used to generate the second pulse. Pulses in a laser of this type must usually be balanced, so that they have the same energy. This balancing procedure also illustrates the utilization of energy stored in the rod. The procedure begins by setting the EO modulator to dump all energy from the rod during the second pulse (i.e., the switch is opened fully during the second pulse and is closed completely during the first pulse). At this stage only the second pulse appears in the output. The switch is opened gradually for the first pulse, and the laser is test fired, with the energy of each pulse monitored. The process is repeated with the switch

opened slightly more for the first pulse, until eventually the first pulse extracts one-half of the energy stored in the rod and the resulting two pulses are balanced.

Procedure for the construction

The active laser medium (laser gain/amplification medium) is a synthetic ruby rod. Ruby is an aluminum oxide crystal in which some of the aluminum atoms have been replaced with chromium atoms (0.05% by weight). Chromium gives ruby its characteristic red color and is responsible for the lasing behavior of the crystal. Chromium atoms absorb green and blue light and emit or reflect only red light. For a ruby laser, a crystal of ruby is formed into a cylinder. The rod's ends had to be polished with great precision, such that the ends of the rod were flat to within a quarter of a wavelength of the output light , and parallel to each other within a few seconds of arc. The finely polished ends of the rod were silvered: one end completely, the other only partially. The rod with its reflective ends then acts as a FabryProt etalon (or a Gires-Tournois etalon). A xenon lamp is rolled over ruby rod and is used for pumping ions to excited state. Ruby lasers are almost always pulsed, with only a few research lasers operated in CW mode (and these require extreme cooling); flashlamp pumping is hence the rule for ruby lasers. Being a three-level system, pumping thresholds are quite high, with pump energies of 1000 J or more common in ruby lasers. Often, the flashlamps used with ruby lasers are helical in shape, with the ruby rod at the center of the helix. Helical flashlamps have a comparatively larger volume than linear flashlamps, so can handle the higher energies required for this laser. A flashlamp is designed to produce an intense pulse of light, usually in a short time frame ranging from microseconds to 1 ms. The lamp itself consists of a glass tube filled with low-pressure (about 450 torr) xenon gas. Electrodes at either end of the glass tube deliver current to the lamp, and triggering is accomplished either by applying an external high-voltage pulse to the surface of the glass tube or superimposing a high-voltage pulse across the main terminals in the same manner that HeNe tubes are ignited. When the lamp fires, it exhibits a very low resistance consuming all energy from the storage capacitor, producing an intense pulse of light in the process, the spectra of the light emitted

being characteristic of the gas used. In the case of ruby, xenon is used since the output is rich in blue light, which is readily absorbed by ruby.

Working of ruby laser

Ruby laser is based on three energy levels. The upper energy level E3 I short-lived, E1 is

ground state, E2 is metastable state with lifetime of

When a flash of light falls on ruby rod, radiations of wavelength 5500 are absorbed by Cr3+ which are pumped to E3.

Pulsed ruby laser

Device that produces a thin and very intense colored light beam; its various applications include fiber optics, manufacturing and surgery.

Laser beam: Straight and powerful monochrome light beam that is emitted by the device. Cooling cylinder: Casing in which water generally circulates to cool the ruby cylinder, which becomes very hot as it produces the beam. Fully reflecting mirror: Reflects all the light energy toward the partially reflecting mirror. The reflection between the mirrors intensifies the light to form a highly concentrated beam. Reflecting cylinder: Lasers metal casing whose inside is polished so that it reflects the light toward the ruby cylinder. Flash tube :Lamp that acts as an energy source by emitting a flash of white light, which excites the ruby atoms and causes them to emit photons. Partially reflecting mirror: Its partial transparency allows light beams to escape. Photon: Energy particle that emits the ruby-chromium atoms as they are excited by flashes in the tube. Ruby cylinder: Ruby bar (crystallized alumina) that contains chromium atoms. It has mirrors at each end, which form the amplification medium to produce the laser beam.

Applications

Transmittance of ruby in optical and near-IR spectra. Note the two broad blue and green absorption bands and the narrow absorption band at 694 nm, which is the wavelength of the ruby laser. Ruby lasers have declined in use with the discovery of better lasing media. They are still used in a number of applications where short pulses of red light are required. Heliographers around the world produce holographic portraits with ruby lasers, in sizes up to a meter square. Because of its high pulsed power and good coherence length, the red 694 nm laser light is preferred to the 532 nm green light of frequency-doubled Nd:YAG , which often requires multiple pulses for large holograms. Many non-destructive testing labs use ruby lasers to create holograms of large objects such as aircraft tires to look for weaknesses in the lining. Ruby lasers were used extensively in tattoo and hair removal, but are being replaced by alexandrite lasers and Nd: YAG lasers in this application.

Ruby (694 nm) Laser Hair removal

This is the oldest type of laser used for hair removal purposes. It works best for light and fine hair types. It cannot be used on people with darker skin, and tanned skin. It is really suitable for those with fair or white skin. They also cover a relatively smaller area than other lasers, and so Ruby Lasers have become popular for laser hair removal these days.

Which Fitzpatrick Skin Type is the Ruby laser suitable for?

This laser is suitable for skin types I and II. It is ideal for people with fair or light skin. It may not be suitable for people with dark skin.

What are the advantages of Ruby laser hair removal?

Long term hair removal can be achieved. Comparatively pain-free than any other laser hair removal procedure. If hair grows back, it tends to sparser and finer and thus less noticeable. This laser has cooling equipment built-in, thus minimizing the chance of burns and any other side effects to laser hair removal.

What are the side effects of Ruby laser hair removal?

Ruby laser cannot be used on tanned or dark skin and on white or light hair. Treats a relatively smaller area. The laser has a slow repetition rate which may increase the time for treatment. There is some risk of burns, scars, redness, swelling, and skin discoloration.

For a ruby laser, a crystal of ruby is formed into a cylinder. A fully reflecting mirror is placed on one end and a partially reflecting mirror on the other. A high-intensity lamp is spiraled around the ruby cylinder to provide a flash of white light that triggers the laser action. The green and blue wavelengths in the flash excite electrons in the chromium atoms to a higher energy level. Upon returning to their normal state, the electrons emit their characteristic ruby-red light. The mirrors reflect some of this light back and forth inside the ruby crystal, stimulating other excited chromium atoms to produce more red light , until the light pulse builds up to high power and drains the energy stored in the crystal.

Research
Ruby laser treatment of congenital melanocytic nevi: a review of the literature and report of our own experience. Nordic MJ, van den Brocken DG, Alting MC, Koon M Department of Plastic, Reconstructive, and Hand Surgery, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Abstract The authors describe the possibilities and advantages of ruby laser treatment of large congenital nevi as an alternative to surgical excision. The literature (from 1980 to 2002) is reviewed and a case report is presented. Literature and the authors' experience show good cosmetic results after ruby laser treatment. Skin texture is improved and there is a considerable reduction in pigmentation and unsightly hair growth. Ruby laser treatment does not result in scarring, mutilation, or functional impairments, in contrast to surgical treatment. Only short outpatient sessions are required, recovery periods are extremely short, and no rehabilitation period is needed. No malignant changes have been reported after treatment with the ruby laser, even after 8 years of follow-up. The results imply that ruby laser treatment could be a valuable new treatment modality for large congenital nevi. It should be considered when patients refuse to undergo surgery, or when surgery would cause severe morbidity. More research should be initiated to assess possible risks and long-term results.

Drawbacks of Ruby laser

The laser requires high pumping power because the laser transition terminates at the ground state and more than half of ground state atoms must be pumped to higher state to achieve population inversion. The efficiency of ruby laser is very low because only green component of the pumping light is used while the rest of components are left unused. The laser output is not continues but occurs in the form of pulses of microseconds duration. The defects due to crystalline imperfection are also present in this laser.

REFERENCES
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_laser http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_laser_medium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_construction

FUNDAMENTALS OF LIGHT SOURCES AND LASERS by Mark Csele http://www.scribd.com/doc/23747889/Ruby-Laser http://www.scribd.com/doc/17259173/Lasers