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:: Laser history

:: Laser construction

:: Laser types

:: Laser application

:: Lasers in industry

:: Laser safety

Laser types

• Gas lasers
  • HeNe (543 nm and 633 nm)
  • Argon(-Ion) (458 nm, 488 nm or 514.5 nm)
  • Carbon dioxide lasers (9.6 µm and 10.6 µm) used in industry for cutting and welding, up to 100 kW possible
  • Carbon monoxide lasers, must be cooled, but extremely powerful, up to 500 kW possible
• Excimer gas lasers, producing ultraviolet light, used in semiconductor manufacturing and in LASIK eye surgery; F₂ (157 nm), ArF (193 nm), KrCl (222 nm), KrF (248 nm), XeCl (308 nm), XeF (351 nm)
• Commonly used laser types for dermatological procedures including removal of tattoos, birthmarks, and hair: ruby (694 nm), alexandrite (755 nm), pulsed diode array (810 nm), Nd:YAG (1064 nm), Ho:YAG (2090 nm), Er:YAG (2940 nm)
• Semiconductorlaser diodes
  • small: used in laser pointers, laser printers, and CD/DVD players
  • bigger: bigger industrial diode lasers are available used in the industry for cutting and welding, up to 10 kW possible
• Neodymium-doped YAG lasers (Nd:YAG), a high-power laser operating in the infrared, used for cutting, welding and marking of metals and other materials
• Ytterbium-doped lasers with crystals such as Yb:YAG, Yb:KGW, Yb:KYW, Yb:SYS, Yb:BOYS, Yb:CaF2, or Yb-doped glasses (e.g. fibers); typically operating around 1020-1050 nm; potentially very high efficiency and high powers due to a small quantum defect; highest laser power in ultrashort pulses achieved with Yb:YAG
• Erbium-doped YAG, 1645 nm
• Thulium-doped YAG, 2015 nm
• Holmium-doped YAG, 2096 nm, a efficient laser operating in the infrared, it is strongly absorbed by water-bearing tissues in sections less than a millimeter thick. It is usually operated in a pulsed mode, and passed through optical fiber surgical devices to resurface joints, remove rot from teeth, vaporize cancers, and pulverize kidney and gall stones.
• Titanium-doped sapphire (Ti:sapphire) lasers, a highly tunable infrared laser, used for spectroscopy
• Erbium-doped fiber lasers, a type of laser formed from a specially made optical fiber, which is used as an amplifier for optical communications.
• External-cavity semiconductor lasers, e.g. for generating high power outputs with good beam quality, wavelength-tunable narrow-linewidth radiation, or ultrashort laser pulses
• Dye lasers
• Quantum cascade lasers