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Ion Laser

created by trondgs

(thing) by trondgs (2 y) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Sun Mar 11 2001 at 19:11:07

An ion laser is a gas discharge laser. It consists of a plasma tube filled with either argon or krypton or a mix of the two. At one end of the tube is a normal mirror while in the other is a semitransparent mirror(this mirror only lets some of the light with the laser's emission frequency, through). The drive current(about 100 V up to 10A) is applied to electrodes in the tube(the cathode is a filament that needs an additional 3 V 20 A 'glow' current). To start the tube a starting pulse of over 10 kV is applied. This starts an ionizing process that emits photons, some of these photons bounce between the mirrors, the rest(having an undesired angle) will exit through or be absorbed by the tube's walls. The bouncing photons stimulate further emission of photons with the same direction, wave frequency and phase. This light will eventually exit through the semi transparent mirror and form the laser beam.

The argon ion laser and krypton ion laser is similar in function to the HeNe laser but has higher output effect, usually from 10 mW to several 100's of mW(but much more powerful ion lasers exist). The ion lasers most commonly found in high speed printing machines(for commercial printing) and surgery.

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chaos

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