Tunable Laser Optics

F.J. Duarte

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367844035
• eBook ISBN: 9781351831055
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Broadly tunable lasers have had, and continue to have, an enormous impact in many and diverse fields of science and technology. From a renaissance in spectroscopy to laser guide stars and laser cooling, the nexus is the tunable laser.

Tunable Laser Optics offers a transparent and comprehensive treatment of the physics of tunable laser optics based on a detailed description of first principles. Authored by a leading expert in the field, the book covers the optics and optical principles needed to build lasers, the optics instrumentation necessary to characterize laser emission, and laser-based optical instrumentation, addressing key topics such as Dirac's notation, the interferometric equation, the uncertainty principle, pulse compression, and tunable narrow-linewidth lasers.

This revised, expanded, and improved Second Edition:

• Contains new and additional material on tunable lasers and quantum optics
• Explains the first principles of tunable laser optics in a clear and concise manner
• Presents an explicit exposition of the relevant theory, without the use of short cuts
• Employs numerous examples, case studies, and figures to illustrate important concepts
• Includes carefully designed problems of direct practical significance to stimulate application

Emphasizing the utilitarian aspects of the optics and theory, Tunable Laser Optics, Second Edition provides valuable insight into the optics and the trade-offs involved in the design and construction of tunable lasers and optical devices. It makes an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate-level and graduate-level optics courses for physics and engineering students, as well as a handy reference for researchers and experimentalists.

1

Introduction to Lasers

1.1 Introduction

Lasers are widely applied in academic, medical, industrial, and military research. They are also used beyond the boundary of research, in numerous engineering and manufacturing applications that continue to expand.

Optics principles and optical elements are applied to build laser resonators and to propagate laser radiation. Optical instruments are utilized to characterize laser emission and lasers have been incorporated into new optical instrumentation. This book focuses on the optics and optical principles needed to build lasers, the optical instrumentation necessary to characterize laser emission, and the laser-based optical instrumentation. The emphasis is on practical and utilitarian aspects of relevant optics including the necessary theory. Albeit this book refers explicitly to macroscopic lasers, many of the principles and ideas, described here, are applicable to microscopic lasers.

This book was written for advanced undergraduate physics students, non-optics graduate students using lasers, engineers, and scientists from other fields seeking to incorporate lasers and optics into their work.

This second edition is a revised, expanded, and improved version of its first edition (Duarte 2003). In addition to new and additional material on tunable lasers, this edition also includes some relevant topics of quantum optics as described in Quantum Optics for Engineers (Duarte 2014).

The organization of this book is fairly straightforward. It has three stages. It begins with an introduction to laser concepts and continues with Chapters 1 through 7 that introduce the ideas necessary to quantify the propagation of laser radiation and that are central to the design tunable laser oscillators. The second stage begins with Chapter 8 on nonlinear optics that has intra- and extracavity applications.

The attention is then focused on a survey of the emission characteristics of most well-known lasers with an added emphas...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Author
• Chapter 1 Introduction to Lasers
• Chapter 2 Dirac Optics
• Chapter 3 The Uncertainty Principle in Optics
• Chapter 4 The Physics of Multiple- Prism Optics
• Chapter 5 Polarization
• Chapter 6 Laser Beam Propagation Matrices
• Chapter 7 Narrow-Linewidth Tunable Laser Oscillators
• Chapter 8 Nonlinear Optics
• Chapter 9 Lasers and Their Emission Characteristics
• Chapter 10 The N-Slit Laser Interferometer Optical Architecture and Applications
• Chapter 11 Interferometry
• Chapter 12 Spectrometry
• Chapter 13 Physical Constants and Optical Quantities
• References
• Index