Synopsis
Lasers are now commonplace throughout many aspects of everyday life,
e.g. in CD players, telecoms, industrial processing and machines as well as
in advanced systems for medical diagnosis and procedures.
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 is discussed. The final section on
laser applications take the form of a self researched review.
Course Information
This is being developed through out semester 1 and periodic
new (and perhaps even improved!) version will be relased as/when/if?
I get time. The basic content will not change, but the web
deployment should visually improve and some? of the tpyyos?
may even get fixed.
Most of the material is in Adobe
Acrobat, (pdf) format, if you have problems with reading this from and
machine in The University of Edinburgh, please E-mail be at the address
below giving details of the machine you are using.
Laser and Applications (PHYS11044) is a 10pt, Level 11 course from
Schedule Q.
Web Deployment
This course was put into Aardvark last year, see the direct link
below.
This is also available to view WebCT, but is actually just takes back to the
same URL, its just takes longer to start!
Other Information