Lasers deliver coherent, monochromatic, well-controlled, and precisely directed light beams. Although lasers make poor choices for general-purpose illumination, they are ideal for concentrating light in space, time, or particular wavelengths. For example, many people were first introduced to lasers by concerts in the early 1970s that incorporated laser light shows, in which moving laser beams of different colours projected changing patterns on planetarium domes, concert-hall ceilings, or outdoor clouds.
Most laser applications fall into one of a few broad categories: (1) transmission and processing of information, (2) precise delivery of energy, and (3) alignment, measurement, and imaging. These categories cover diverse applications, from pinpoint energy delivery for delicate surgery to heavy-duty welding and from the mundane alignment of suspended ceilings to laboratory measurements of atomic properties.
Transmission and processing of information
Laser scanners
The ability to focus laser beams onto very small spots and to switch them on and off billions of times per second makes lasers important tools in telecommunications and information processing. In laser supermarket scanners, a rotating mirror scans a red beam while clerks move packages across the beam. Optical sensors detect light reflected from striped bar codes on packages, decode the symbol, and relay the information to a computer so that it can add the price to the bill.
Optical discs
Tiny, inexpensive semiconductor lasers read data from a growing variety of optical compact disc formats to play music, display video recordings, and read computer software. Audio compact discs, using infrared lasers, were introduced around 1980; CD-ROMs (compact disc read-only memory) for computer data soon followed. Newer optical drives use more powerful lasers to record data on light-sensitive discs called CD-R (recordable) or CD-RW (read/write), which can be played in ordinary CD-ROM drives. DVDs (digital video, or versatile, discs) work similarly, but they use a shorter-wavelength red laser to read smaller spots, so the discs can hold enough information to play a digitized motion picture. A new generation of discs called Blu-ray uses blue-light lasers to read and store data at an even higher density.
Fibre-optic communication systems
Fibre-optic communication systems that transmit signals more than a few kilometres also use semiconductor laser beams. The optical signals are sent at infrared wavelengths of 1.3 to 1.6 micrometres, where glass fibres are most transparent. This technology has become the backbone of the global telecommunications network, and most telephone calls traveling beyond the confines of a single town go part of the way through optical fibres.
Precise delivery of energy
Industrial uses
Laser energy can be focused in space and concentrated in time so that it heats, burns away, or vaporizes many materials. Although the total energy in a laser beam may be small, the concentrated power on small spots or during short intervals can be enormous. Although lasers cost much more than mechanical drills or blades, their different properties allow them to perform otherwise difficult tasks. A laser beam does not deform flexible materials as a mechanical drill would, so it can drill holes in materials such as soft rubber nipples for baby bottles. Likewise, laser beams can drill or cut into extremely hard materials without dulling bits or blades. For example, lasers have drilled holes in diamond dies used for drawing wire.
Medical applications
Surgical removal of tissue with a laser is a physical process similar to industrial laser drilling. Carbon-dioxide lasers burn away tissue because their infrared beams are strongly absorbed by the water that makes up the bulk of living cells. A laser beam cauterizes the cuts, stopping bleeding in blood-rich tissues such as the female reproductive tract or the gums. Laser wavelengths near one micrometre can penetrate the eye, welding a detached retina back into place, or cutting internal membranes that often grow cloudy after cataract surgery. Less-intense laser pulses can destroy abnormal blood vessels that spread across the retina in patients suffering from diabetes, delaying the blindness often associated with the disease. Ophthalmologists surgically correct visual defects by removing tissue from the cornea, reshaping the transparent outer layer of the eye with intense ultraviolet pulses.
Through the use of optical fibres similar to the tiny strands of glass that carry information in telephone systems, laser light can be delivered to places within the body that the beams could not otherwise reach. One important example involves threading a fibre through the urethra and into the kidney so that the end of the fibre can deliver intense laser pulses to kidney stones. The laser energy splits the stones into fragments small enough to pass through the urethra without requiring surgical incisions. Fibres also can be inserted through small incisions to deliver laser energy to precise spots in the knee joint during arthroscopic surgery.
Another medical application for lasers is in the treatment of skin conditions. Pulsed lasers can bleach certain types of tattoos as well as dark-red birthmarks called portwine stains. Cosmetic laser treatments include removing unwanted body hair and wrinkles.
High-energy lasers
Scientists have shown that lasers can concentrate extremely high powers in either pulses or continuous beams. Major applications for these high-power levels are fusion research, nuclear weapons testing, and missile defense.
Extremely high temperatures and pressures are needed to force atomic nuclei to fuse together, releasing energy. In the 1960s physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California calculated that intense laser pulses could produce those conditions by heating and compressing tiny pellets containing mixtures of hydrogen isotopes. They suggested using these “microimplosions” both to generate energy for civilian use and to simulate the implosion of a hydrogen bomb, which involves similar processes. Since then, Livermore has built a series of lasers to test and refine these theories, primarily for the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program.
Military laser weapon research also dates back to the 1960s, but it attracted little attention until President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. High-energy lasers offer a way to deliver destructive energy to targets at the speed of light, which is very attractive for fast-moving targets such as nuclear missiles. Military researchers have tested high-energy lasers for use as weapons on land, at sea, in the air, and in space, although no high-energy lasers have been placed in orbit. Experiments have shown that massive lasers can generate high powers; however, tests have also shown that the atmosphere distorts such powerful beams, causing them to spread out and miss their targets. These problems and the end of the Cold War slowed research on laser weapons, though interest continues in laser weapons to defend against smaller-scale missile attacks.
Alignment, measurement, and imaging
Surveying
Surveyors and construction workers use laser beams to draw straight lines through the air. The beam itself is not visible in the air except where scattered by dust or haze, but it projects a bright point on a distant object. Surveyors bounce the beam off a mirror to measure direction and angle. The beam can set an angle for grading irrigated land, and a rotating beam can define a smooth plane for construction workers installing walls or ceilings.
Pulsed laser radar can measure distance in the same manner as microwave radar by timing how long it takes a laser pulse to bounce back from a distant object. For instance, in 1969 laser radar precisely measured the distance from the Earth to the Moon, and in the 1970s military laser range finders were developed to measure the distance to battlefield targets accurately. Laser range finding is now widely used for remote sensing. Instruments flown on aircraft can profile the layers of foliage in a forest, and the Mars Global Surveyor (see Mars: Spacecraft exploration) used a laser altimeter to map elevations on the Martian surface.
Interferometry and holography
The coherence of laser light is crucial for interferometry (see optical interferometer) and holography, which depend on interactions between light waves to make extremely precise measurements and to record three-dimensional images. The result of adding light waves together depends on their relative phases. If the peaks of one align with the valleys of the other, they will interfere destructively to cancel each other out; if their peaks align, they will interfere constructively to produce a bright spot. This effect can be used for measurement by splitting a beam into two identical halves that follow different paths. Changing one path just half a wavelength from the other will shift the two out of phase, producing a dark spot. This technique has proved invaluable for precise measurements of very small distances.
Holograms are made by splitting a laser beam into two identical halves, using one beam to illuminate an object. This object beam then is combined with the other half—the reference beam—in the plane of a photographic plate, producing a random-looking pattern of light and dark zones that record the wave front of light from the object. Later, when laser light illuminates that pattern from the same angle as the reference beam, it is scattered to reconstruct an identical wave front of light, which appears to the viewer as a three-dimensional image of the object. Holograms now can be mass-produced by an embossing process, as used on credit cards, and do not have to be viewed in laser light.
Research tool
The ability to control laser wavelength and pulse duration precisely has proved invaluable for fundamental research in physics and other sciences. Lasers have been particularly important in spectroscopy, the study of the light absorbed and emitted when atoms and molecules make transitions between energy levels, which can reveal the inner workings of atoms. Lasers can concentrate much more power into a narrow range of wavelengths than other light sources, which makes them invaluable in analyzing fine spectroscopic details.
For example, simultaneously illuminating samples with laser beams coming from opposite directions can cancel the effects of the random motions of atoms or molecules in a gas. This technique has greatly improved the precision of the measurement of the Rydberg constant, which is critical in calculations of atomic properties, and it earned Arthur Schawlow a share of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics. Nicolaas Bloembergen shared the prize for developing other types of high-precision laser spectroscopy.
Since that early work, laser spectroscopy has expanded considerably. Laser pulses have been used to take snapshots of chemical reactions as they occur, on time scales faster than atomic vibrations in a molecule. These techniques have given chemists new ways to understand chemical physics, and they earned Ahmed Zewail the 1999 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Thanks to his work, the Nobel Committee wrote, “we have reached the end of the road: no chemical reactions take place faster than this.”
Physicists also have used the subtle forces exerted by laser beams to slow and trap atoms, molecules, and small particles. Arthur Ashkin, a researcher at Bell Labs, showed that a tightly focused horizontal laser beam could trap atoms in the zone with highest light intensity, a technique called “optical tweezers” now used in a variety of research. Other research has shown that laser illumination can slow the motion of atoms if its wavelength is tuned to a point slightly off the wavelength of peak absorption. The atoms repeatedly absorb photons from the beam and then emit photons in random directions. The photon momentum slows the motion toward the laser beam. Placing the atoms at the junction of six laser beams aimed at right angles to each other slows their momentum in all directions, producing a clump of atoms less than 0.001 degree above absolute zero. Adding a magnetic field improves confinement and can reduce their temperature to less than one-millionth degree above absolute zero. These techniques have led to the creation of a new state of matter, called a Bose-Einstein condensate, and they earned Steven Chu, Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, and William D. Phillips the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Jeff Hecht