2 B
THURSDAY. JULY 18, 1963
MEDFORD MAIL TRIBUNE, MEDFORD, OREGON
Various Beams of
Light Are Made
With New Lasers
New York, N.Y.-(Scicntific
American Feature) - Light
beams of almost any desired
color and intensity from infra
red to ultraviolet can now
be produced by lasers.
According to Arthur L.
Schawlow, professor of phys
ics at Stanford university, ad
vances in the capabilities of
the laser have come so swiftly
since its announcement three
years ago this month that sci
entists are embarrassed by
their riches, and as a conse
quence have scarcely begun
to find applications for the in
vention that promises to revo
lutionize fields of application
as diverse as electrical com
munications and eye surgery.
"By conservative estimate,"
Schawlow states, "500 re
search groups are now engag
ed in laser development and
exploitation in the U.S. alone.
Much of this effort is directed
toward the use of laser beams
in communications systems,
' The amount of information
that can be carried by a com
munication channel is propor-
i tional to lis frequency. In
principle, the visible region of
the spectrum from red to blue
could accommodate some 80
million television channels.
The realization of this poten-
tial is still far in the future.
Generating the light beams is
one thing. Harnessing them to
carry signals is another, Out
side the field of community
tions - in chemistry, medicine
and several other disciplines
- many possible uses of a
strong beam of monochromat
ic laser light are being inten
sively explored.
First Working Laser
"The first working laser,
developed by T. H. Maiman
three years ago, emitted only
1 pulses of deep red liRht. Its
rays fascinated scientists be-
r cause they vibrated at a single
frequency, much as a piano
emits a single note when one
key is struck. Ordinary lamps
emit many frequencies, com
parable to the noise or dis
cord that a piano would pro
duce if all keys were struck
In unison. The pure monochro
matic light of the laser can
be focused more sharply than
ordinary light and beams of
laser light do not spread or
scatter appreciably. Moreover,
lasers in effect provide
means for concentrating the
energy of a wide spectrum of
light into a single color of
great intensity. In the case
of Maiman's laser this was
accomplished by focusing the
rays of a powerful flash lump
onto a short, cigarette-sized
rod of specially treated ruby.
The ruby absorbed the flash
and re-cmltted the concentrat
ed energy as a thin red ray
that could easily vaporize
tungsten and olher highly re
fractory substances.
"It has now been found that
many substances other than
ruby can similarly concen
trate light of other colors. The
substances include exotic ele
ments such ns europium, sa
marium, ytterbium, and gases
such as helium, krypton, xen
on. "With radical advances In
laser technology appearing lit
erally every few days, there
has been little chance to do
the careful, detailed develop
ment work needed to realize
practical applications, Some
proposed applications, particu
larly military ones, require
much higher output energies
than those now available. Un
til the efficiency and the aver
age output power are increas
ed, It will not be practical to
uso lasers for large scale cut
ting and welding. There is no
apparent reason In principle
why this cannot be done even
tually. Rallied Application
"O n e related application
has already been realized:
When the retina of the eye
has been torn or injured, it is
now possible to 'weld' the ret
ina to its support by coagula
tion with an Intense spot of
light. The short flash Is deliv
ered so abruptly that the eye
does not require immobiliza
tion during the treatment.
Other potential applications
include the triggering of
chemical reactions, measuring
distances, motions and time
with unprecedented accuracy,
and determining the nature
and characteristics of sub
stances that defy conventional
analytical techniques.
"No single laser can com
bine all of the attributes nec
essary to all applications. The
immediate engineering task is
to select the proper combina
tion of properties for any pro
posed application and to de
sign the particular laser to fit
v it. This should become in
creasingly easy because one
can be sure that there will
continue to be surprising in
novations and advances in la
ser development."
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