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The Laser’s European Family Tree

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Jörg Schwartz, European Correspondent, [email protected]

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the date when the first man-made laser saw the light of day, it is important to look back at its birth. And although that beginning took place in the hills of sunny Malibu, Calif., on May 16, 1960, this groundbreaking invention has quite a few European forebears and descendants. Although it seems that, for this particular baby, a bit of disagreement exists as to who the parents were, there is good certainty about the grandfather: Albert Einstein. He came up with the concept of stimulated emission in 1916-17 in his paper “Zur Quantentheorie der...Read full article

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    Published: April 2010
    Glossary
    dye laser
    A laser using a dye solution as its active medium. Its output is a short pulse of broad spectral content and its achievable gain is high. Dye lasers function at room temperature. Synchronous pumping can be used to produce a continuous train of tunable picosecond pulses for sustained periods.
    nonlinear optics
    Nonlinear optics is a branch of optics that studies the optical phenomena that occur when intense light interacts with a material and induces nonlinear responses. In contrast to linear optics, where the response of a material is directly proportional to the intensity of the incident light, nonlinear optics involves optical effects that are not linearly dependent on the input light intensity. These nonlinear effects become significant at high light intensities, such as those produced by...
    optical pumping
    The process whereby the number of atoms or atomic systems in a set of energy levels is changed by the absorption of light that falls on the material. This process raises the atoms to specific higher energy levels and may result in a population inversion between certain intermediate levels. The optical pumping of an optical medium within a laser cavity is one of the fundamental processes involved in the generation of a beam.
    siemens
    The electric conductance of a conductor in which a current of 1 ampere is produced by an electric potential difference of 1 volt.
    stimulated emission
    Radiation similar in origin to spontaneous emission but determined by the presence of other radiation having the same frequency. Because the phase and amplitude of the stimulated wave depend on the stimulating wave, this radiation is coherent with the stimulating wave. The rate of stimulated emission is proportional to the intensity of the stimulating radiation.
    Albert EinsteinAlfred KastleranniversaryAnthony SiegmanBasic ScienceBerlincavitiesCNETCoherentCommunicationsCuillaume DuraffourgCyril HilsumDye LaserEuropeFeaturesfiber lasersFritz Peter SchäferGeneral ElectricGerd HerzigerHans Joachim EichlerHerbert WellinghistoryHorst WeberindustrialJörg SchwartzLambda PhysikMaurice Berardnonlinear opticsoptical pumpingOrazio SveltoPierre AigrainpolymersQuantelRofin-Sinarrubysemiconductor lasersSiemenssilicon photonicsSoviet UnionSPIstimulated emissionTechnical University BerlinTelefunkenTheodor HänschTheodore MaimanTrumpfultrashort pulsesUSAWolfgang KaiserLasers

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