What is the helium-neon laser used for?

Helium-neon (He-Ne) lasers are widely used for interferometry because they are inexpensive and provide a continuous, visible output. They operate normally at a wavelength of 633 nm, but modified versions are available with useful outputs at other visible and infrared wavelengths.

What kind of helium is used in neon lasers?

Helium-Neon laser definition Helium-Neon laser is a type of gas laser in which a mixture of helium and neon gas is used as a gain medium. Helium-Neon laser is also known as He-Ne laser.

What is the principle of helium-neon laser?

It has continuous power outputs ranging from less than 1 mW to over 100 mW and has a lifetime of 50,000 h for some commercial units. The excitation mechanism involves electrons colliding with helium atoms to produce helium metastable atoms, which then transfer their energy to neon laser levels.

Why He Ne laser is better than ruby laser?

Ruby laser requires high power pumping source, whereas Helium-neon laser requires low power pumping source like electric discharge. Efficiency of helium-neon laser is more than ruby laser. The defects due to crystalline imperfections are also present in the ruby laser.

What are three types of LASERs?

Types of lasers

• Solid-state laser.
• Gas laser.
• Liquid laser.
• Semiconductor laser.

Why is Ne laser superior to ruby laser?

Why discharge tube is taken narrow?

Because the number of collisions with the tube walls increase as the tube becomes narrow, the laser gain is inversely proportional to the tube radius. So, the tube diameter of a He-Ne laser must be as small as possible. The low gain of the active medium in a He-Ne laser limits the output power to low power.

Which laser is eye safe?

Lasers with emission wavelengths longer than ≈ 1.4 μm are often called “eye-safe”, because light in that wavelength range is strongly absorbed in the eye’s cornea and lens and therefore cannot reach the significantly more sensitive retina.

How does ruby laser work?

A ruby laser most often consists of a ruby rod that must be pumped with very high energy, usually from a flashtube, to achieve a population inversion. The rod is often placed between two mirrors, forming an optical cavity, which oscillate the light produced by the ruby’s fluorescence, causing stimulated emission.

Which laser has highest efficiency?

With 450 W quasi-CW stacked laser diode bars pumping at 1064 nm, 236 W optimum output laser at 1064 nm was obtained. The optical-to-optical conversion efficiency was 52.5% and corresponding slope efficiency was 62%. This is up to now the highest slope-efficiency acquired in high power Nd:YAG ceramic laser.

What are the uses of helium neon laser?

Applications / Uses of He-Ne Laser He-Ne lasers are produced in large quantities from many years. Many schools / colleges / universities use this type of laser in their science programs and experiments. He-Ne lasers also used in super market checkout counters to read bar codes and QR codes. The He-Ne lasers also used by newspapers for reproducing transmitted photographs.

Why two gases helium and neon are used in laser?

Optical pumping process is the excitation of atoms of the active material to generate laser by the optical energy, Helium and neon gases are suitable for the production of gases laser due to the values of their excited metastable states which are very close to each other.

Why is helium used in laser?

Helium serves several functions in laser processing: it is primarily a shielding gas for the molten pool in laser welding but is also an important component of the lasing gas in all CO 2 lasers. Carbon dioxide lasers are also used for cutting, drilling, cladding, and heat treatment, although welding is the only process that also uses helium as a shielding gas.

What is the wavelength of helium neon laser?

Advantages of He-Ne Laser He-Ne laser has very good coherence property He-Ne laser can produce three wavelengths that are 1.152µm, 3.391 µm and 632.8nm, in which the 632.8nm is most common because it is visible usually in red color. He-Ne laser tube has very small length approximately from 10 to 100cm and best life time of 20.000 hours.