A helium–neon laser or He–Ne laser is a type of gas laser whose high energetic gain medium consists of a mixture of helium and neon (ratio between 5:1 and 10:1) at a total pressure of approximately 1 Torr (133.322 Pa) inside a small electrical discharge. The best-known and most widely used He-Ne laser operates at a center wavelength of 632.81646 nm (in air), 632.99138 nm (vac), and frequency 473.6122 THz, in the red part of the visible spectrum. Because of the mode structure of the laser cavity, the instantaneous output of a laser can be shifted by up to 500 MHz in either direction from the center.
History of He-Ne laser development The first He-Ne lasers emitted infrared at 1150 nm, and were the first gas lasers and the first lasers with continuous wave output. However, a laser that operated at visible wavelengths was much more in demand. A number of other neon transitions were investigated to identify ones in which a population inversion could be achieved. The 633 nm line was found to have the highest gain in the visible spectrum, making this the wavelength of choice for most He-Ne lasers. However, other visible and infrared stimulated-emission wavelengths are possible, and by using mirror coatings with their peak reflectance at these other wavelengths; He-Ne lasers could be engineered to employ those transitions, including visible lasers appearing red, orange, yellow, and green. Stimulated emissions are known from over 100 μm in the far infrared to 540 nm in the visible. Because visible transitions have somewhat lower gain, these lasers generally have lower output efficiencies and are more costly. The 3.39 μm transition has a very high gain, but is prevented from use in an ordinary He-Ne laser (of a different intended wavelength) because the cavity and mirrors are lossy at that wavelength. However, in high-power He-Ne lasers having a particularly long cavity, superluminescence at 3.39 μm can become a nuisance, robbing power from the stimulated emission medium, often requiring additional suppression. The best-known and most widely used He-Ne laser operates at a wavelength of 632.8 nm, in the red part of the visible spectrum. It was developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1962, 18 months after the pioneering demonstration at the same laboratory of the first continuous infrared He-Ne gas laser in December 1960.
Construction and operation The gain medium of the laser, as suggested by its name, is a mixture of helium and neon gases, in approximately a 10:1 ratio, contained at low pressure in a glass envelope. The gas mixture is mostly helium, so that helium atoms can be excited. The excited helium atoms collide with neon atoms, exciting some of them to the state that radiates 632.8 nm. Without helium, the neon atoms would be excited mostly to lower excited states, responsible for non-laser lines. A neon laser with no helium can be constructed, but it is much more difficult without this means of energy coupling. Therefore, a He-Ne laser that has lost enough of its helium (e.g., due to diffusion through the seals or glass) will lose its laser functionality because the pumping efficiency will be too low. The energy or pump source of the laser is provided by a high-voltage electrical discharge passed through the gas between electrodes (anode and cathode) within the tube. A DC current of 3 to 20 mA is typically required for CW operation. The optical cavity of the laser usually consists of two concave mirrors or one plane and one concave mirror: one having very high (typically 99.9%) reflectance, and the output coupler mirror allowing approximately 1% transmission.
Commercial He-Ne lasers are relatively small devices compared to other gas lasers, having cavity lengths usually ranging from 15 to 50 cm (but sometimes up to about 1 meter to achieve the highest powers), and optical output power levels ranging from 0.5 to 50 mW. The precise wavelength of red He-Ne lasers is 632.991 nm in a vacuum, which is refracted to about 632.816 nm in air. The wavelengths of the stimulated emission modes lie within about 0.001 nm above or below this value, and the wavelengths of those modes shift within this range due to thermal expansion and contraction of the cavity. Frequency-stabilized versions enable the wavelength of a single mode to be specified to within 1 part in 108 by the technique of comparing the powers of two longitudinal modes in opposite polarizations. Absolute stabilization of the laser's frequency (or wavelength) as fine as 2.5 parts in 1011 can be obtained through use of an iodine absorption cell.
The mechanism producing population inversion and light amplification in a He-Ne laser plasma originates with inelastic collision of energetic electrons with ground-state helium atoms in the gas mixture. As shown in the accompanying energy-level diagram, these collisions excite helium atoms from the ground state to higher energy excited states, among them the 23S1 and 21S0 (LS, or Russell–Saunders coupling, front number 2 indicates that an excited electron is n = 2 state) are long-lived metastable states. Because of a fortuitous near-coincidence between the energy levels of the two He metastable states and the 5s2 and 4s2 (Paschen notation) levels of neon, collisions between these helium metastable atoms and ground-state neon atoms results in a selective and efficient transfer of excitation energy from the helium to neon. This excitation energy transfer process is given by the reaction equations
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