How lasers work (in theory)
How does a laser really work? It's Bose - Einstein statistics! (photons are bosons) Check out Smarter Every Day's video showing lasers in real life: http://bit.ly/uBwhU2 Trying out a new...
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To make a laser, all you need to do is give a big collection of atoms enough energy sothey're excited and ready to emit light. Once one of them spontaneously emits a photon,it'll stimulate some of the others to do so, and you get a nice cascade of illumination.But instead of letting all the light escape, it's more powerful to trap it between twomirrors and let it to bounce back and forth through the atoms. All that passing lightwill stimulate them to emit even more light, and as long as you keep on re-exciting theatoms, they're happy to go on emitting light forever.But why do the atoms emit light just because another photon passes by? It's actually prettysimple.Imagine flipping two coins: they can either be in the same state,or in di...
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To make a laser, all you need to do is give a big collection of atoms enough energy sothey're excited and ready to emit light. Once one of them spontaneously emits a photon,it'll stimulate some of the others to do so, and you get a nice cascade of illumination.But instead of letting all the light escape, it's more powerful to trap it between twomirrors and let it to bounce back and forth through the atoms. All that passing lightwill stimulate them to emit even more light, and as long as you keep on re-exciting theatoms, they're happy to go on emitting light forever.But why do the atoms emit light just because another photon passes by? It's actually prettysimple.Imagine flipping two coins: they can either be in the same state,or in di...
