Laser amplifiers:

Almost any laser active gain medium can be pumped to produce gain for light at the wavelength of a laser made with the same material as its gain medium. Such amplifiers are commonly used to produce high power laser systems. Special types such as regenerative amplifiers and chirped-pulse amplifiers are used to amplify ultrashort pulses.

Doped fiber amplifiers

Schematic diagram of a simple Doped Fiber Amplifier Doped fiber amplifiers (DFAs) are optical amplifiers that use a doped optical fiber as a gain medium to amplify an optical signal. They are related to fiber lasers. The signal to be amplified and a pump laser are multiplexed into the doped fiber, and the signal is amplified through interaction with the doping ions. The most common example is the Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA), where the core of a silica fiber is doped with trivalent Erbium ions and can be efficiently pumped with a laser at a wavelength of 980 nm or 1,480 nm, and exhibits gain in the 1,550 nm region. Amplification is achieved by stimulated emission of photons from dopant ions in the doped fiber. The pump laser excites ions into a higher energy from where they can decay via stimulated emission of a photon at the signal wavelength back to a lower energy level. The excited ions can also decay spontaneously (spontaneous emission) or even through nonradiative processes involving interactions with phonons of the glass matrix. These last two decay mechanisms compete with stimulated emission reducing the efficiency of light amplification. The amplification window of an optical amplifier is the range of optical wavelengths for which the amplifier yields a usable gain. The amplification window is determined by the spectroscopic properties of the dopant ions, the glass structure of the optical fiber, and the wavelength and power of the pump laser. Although the electronic transitions of an isolated ion are very well defined, broadening of the energy levels occurs when the ions are incorporated into the glass of the optical fiber and thus the amplification window is also broadened. This broadening is both homogeneous (all ions exhibit the same broadened spectrum) and inhomogeneous (different ions in different glass locations exhibit different spectra). Homogeneous broadening arises from the interactions with phonons of the glass, while inhomogeneous broadening is caused by differences in the glass sites where different ions are hosted. Different sites expose ions to different local electric fields, which shifts the energy levels via the Stark effect. In addition, the Stark effect also removes the degeneracy of energy states having the same total angular momentum (specified by the quantum number J). Thus, for example, the trivalent Erbium ion (Er+3) has a

ground state with J = 15/2, and in the presence of an electric field splits into J + 1/2 = 8 sublevels with slightly different energies. The first excited state has J = 13/2 and therefore a Stark manifold with 7 sublevels. Transitions from the J = 13/2 excited state to the J= 15/2 ground state are responsible for the gain at 1.5 m wavelength. The gain spectrum of the EDFA has several peaks that are smeared by the above broadening mechanisms. The net result is a very broad spectrum (30 nm in silica, typically). The broad gain-bandwidth of fiber amplifiers make them particularly useful in wavelength-division multiplexed communications systems as a single amplifier can be utilized to amplify all signals being carried on a fiber and whose wavelengths fall within the gain window.

Basic principle of EDFA

A relatively high-powered beam of light is mixed with the input signal using a wavelength selective coupler. The input signal and the excitation light must be at significantly different wavelengths. The mixed light is guided into a section of fiber with erbium ions included in the core. This high-powered light beam excites the erbium ions to their higher-energy state. When the photons belonging to the signal at a different wavelength from the pump light meet the excited erbium atoms, the erbium atoms give up some of their energy to the signal and return to their lower-energy state. A significant point is that the erbium gives up its energy in the form of additional photons which are exactly in the same phase and direction as the signal being amplified. So the signal is amplified along its direction of travel only. This is not unusual - when an atom lases it always gives up its energy in the same direction and phase as the incoming light. Thus all of the additional signal power is guided in the same fiber mode as the incoming signal.There is usually an isolator placed at the output to prevent reflections returning from the attached fiber. Such reflections disrupt amplifier operation and in the extreme case can cause the amplifier to become a laser.

Noise
The principal source of noise in DFAs is Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE), which has a spectrum approximately the same as the gain spectrum of the amplifier. Noise figure in an ideal DFA is 3 dB, while practical amplifiers can have noise figure as large as 68 dB. As well as decaying via stimulated emission, electrons in the upper energy level can also decay by spontaneous emission, which occurs at random, depending upon the glass structure and inversion level. Photons are emitted spontaneously in all directions, but a proportion of those will be emitted in a direction that falls within the numerical aperture of the fiber and are thus captured and guided by the fiber. Those photons captured may then interact with other dopant ions, and are thus amplified by stimulated emission. The initial spontaneous emission is therefore amplified in the same manner as the signals, hence the term Amplified Spontaneous Emission. ASE is emitted by the amplifier in both the forward and reverse directions, but only the forward ASE is a direct concern to system performance since that noise will co-propagate with the signal to the receiver where it degrades system performance. Counter-propagating ASE can, however, lead to degradation of the amplifier's performance since the ASE can deplete the inversion level and thereby reduce the gain of the amplifier.

Gain saturation

Gain is achieved in a DFA due to population inversion of the dopant ions. The inversion level of a DFA is set, primarily, by the power of the pump wavelength and the power at the amplified wavelengths. As the signal power increases, or the pump power decreases, the inversion level will reduce and thereby the gain of the amplifier will be reduced. This effect is known as gain saturation as the signal level increases, the amplifier saturates and cannot produce any more output power, and therefore the gain reduces. Saturation is also commonly known as gain compression. To achieve optimum noise performance DFAs are operated under a significant amount of gain compression (10 dB typically), since that reduces the rate of spontaneous emission, thereby reducing ASE. Another advantage of operating the DFA in the gain saturation region is that small fluctuations in the input signal power are reduced in the output amplified signal: smaller input signal powers experience larger (less saturated) gain, while larger input powers see less gain. The leading edge of the pulse is amplified, until the saturation energy of the gain medium is reached. In some condition, the width (FWHM) of the pulse is reduced.

Inhomogeneous broadening effects

Due to the inhomogeneous portion of the linewidth broadening of the dopant ions, the gain spectrum has an inhomogeneous component and gain saturation occurs, to a small extent, in an inhomogeneous manner. This effect is known as Spectral hole burning because a high power signal at one wavelength can 'burn' a hole in the gain for wavelengths close to that signal by saturation of the inhomogeneously broadened ions. Spectral holes vary in width depending on the characteristics of the optical fiber in question and the power of the burning signal, but are typically less than 1 nm at the short wavelength end of the C-band, and a few nm at the long wavelength end of the C-band. The depth of the holes are very small, though, making it difficult to observe in practice.

Polarization effects
Although the DFA is essentially a polarization independent amplifier, a small proportion of the dopant ions interact preferentially with certain polarizations and a small dependence on the polarization of the input signal may occur (typically < 0.5 dB). This is called Polarization Dependent Gain (PDG). The absorption and emission crossections of the ions can be modeled as ellipsoids with the major axes aligned at random in all directions in different glass sites. The random distribution of the orientation of the ellipsoids in a glass produces a macroscopically isotropic medium, but a strong pump laser induces an anisotropic distribution by selectively exciting those ions that are more aligned with the optical field vector of the pump. Also, those excited ions aligned with the signal field produce more stimulated emission. The change in gain is thus dependent on the alignment of the polarizations of the pump and signal lasers i.e. whether the two lasers are interacting with the same sub-set of dopant ions or not. In an ideal doped fiber without birefringence, the PDG would be inconveniently large. Fortunately, in optical fibers small amounts of birefringence are always present and, furthermore, the fast and slow axes vary randomly along the fiber length. A typical DFA has several tens of meters, long enough to already show this randomness of the birefringence axes. These two combined effects (which in transmission fibers give rise to polarization mode dispersion) produce a misalignment of the relative polarizations of the signal and pump lasers along the fiber, thus tending to average out the

PDG. The result is that PDG is very difficult to observe in a single amplifier (but is noticeable in links with several cascaded amplifiers).

Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

The erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is the most deployed fiber amplifier as its amplification window coincides with the third transmission window of silica-based optical fiber. Two bands have developed in the third transmission window the Conventional, or C-band, from approximately 1525 nm 1565 nm, and the Long, or L-band, from approximately 1570 nm to 1610 nm. Both of these bands can be amplified by EDFAs, but it is normal to use two different amplifiers, each optimized for one of the bands. The principal difference between C- and L-band amplifiers is that a longer length of doped fiber is used in L-band amplifiers. The longer length of fiber allows a lower inversion level to be used, thereby giving at longer wavelengths (due to the band-structure of Erbium in silica) while still providing a useful amount of gain. EDFAs have two commonly-used pumping bands 980 nm and 1480 nm. The 980 nm band has a higher absorption cross-section and is generally used where low-noise performance is required. The absorption band is relatively narrow and so wavelength stabilised laser sources are typically needed. The 1480 nm band has a lower, but broader, absorption cross-section and is generally used for higher power amplifiers. A combination of 980 nm and 1480 nm pumping is generally utilised in amplifiers. The optical fiber amplifier was invented by H. J. Shaw and Michel Digonnet at Stanford University, California, in the early 1980s.[1] The EDFA was first demonstrated several years later [2] by a group including David N. Payne, R. Mears, and L. Reekie, from the University of Southampton and a group from AT&T Bell Laboratories, E. Desurvire, P. Becker, and J. Simpson.[3]

Doped fiber amplifiers for other wavelength ranges

Thulium doped fiber amplifiers have been used in the S-band (14501490 nm) and Praseodymium doped amplifiers in the 1300 nm region. However, those regions have not seen any significant commercial use so far and so those amplifiers have not been the subject of as much development as the EDFA. However, Ytterbium doped fiber lasers and amplifiers, operating near 1 micrometre wavelength, have many applications in industrial processing of materials, as these devices can be made with extremely high output power (tens of kilowatts).

Semiconductor optical amplifier

Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are amplifiers which use a semiconductor to provide the gain medium.[4] These amplifiers have a similar structure to FabryProt laser diodes but with anti-reflection design elements at the endfaces. Recent designs include antireflective coatings and tilted waveguide and window regions which can reduce endface reflection to less than 0.001%. Since this creates a loss of power from the cavity which is greater than the gain it prevents the amplifier from acting as a laser.

Semiconductor optical amplifiers are typically made from group III-V compound semiconductors such as GaAs/AlGaAs, InP/InGaAs, InP/InGaAsP and InP/InAlGaAs, though any direct band gap semiconductors such as II-VI could conceivably be used. Such amplifiers are often used in telecommunication systems in the form of fiber-pigtailed components, operating at signal wavelengths between 0.85 m and 1.6 m and generating gains of up to 30 dB. The semiconductor optical amplifier is of small size and electrically pumped. It can be potentially less expensive than the EDFA and can be integrated with semiconductor lasers, modulators, etc. However, the performance is still not comparable with the EDFA. The SOA has higher noise, lower gain, moderate polarization dependence and high nonlinearity with fast transient time. The main advantage of SOA is that all four types of nonlinear operations (cross gain modulation, cross phase modulation, wavelength conversion and four wave mixing) can be conducted. Furthermore, SOA can be run with a low power laser.[5] This originates from the short nanosecond or less upper state lifetime, so that the gain reacts rapidly to changes of pump or signal power and the changes of gain also cause phase changes which can distort the signals. This nonlinearity presents the most severe problem for optical communication applications. However it provides the possibility for gain in different wavelength regions from the EDFA. "Linear optical amplifiers" using gain-clamping techniques have been developed. High optical nonlinearity makes semiconductor amplifiers attractive for all optical signal processing like all-optical switching and wavelength conversion. There has been much research on semiconductor optical amplifiers as elements for optical signal processing, wavelength conversion, clock recovery, signal demultiplexing, and pattern recognition.

Vertical-cavity SOA
A recent addition to the SOA family is the vertical-cavity SOA (VCSOA). These devices are similar in structure to, and share many features with, vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs). The major difference when comparing VCSOAs and VCSELs is the reduced mirror reflectivities used in the amplifier cavity. With VCSOAs, reduced feedback is necessary to prevent the device from reaching lasing threshold. Due to the extremely short cavity length, and correspondingly thin gain medium, these devices exhibit very low singlepass gain (typically on the order of a few percent) and also a very large free spectral range (FSR). The small single-pass gain requires relatively high mirror reflectivities to boost the total signal gain. In addition to boosting the total signal gain, the use of the resonant cavity structure results in a very narrow gain bandwidth; coupled with the large FSR of the optical cavity, this effectively limits operation of the VCSOA to single-channel amplification. Thus, VCSOAs can be seen as amplifying filters. Given their vertical-cavity geometry, VCSOAs are resonant cavity optical amplifiers that operate with the input/output signal entering/exiting normal to the wafer surface. In addition to their small size, the surface normal operation of VCSOAs leads to a number of advantages, including low power consumption, low noise figure, polarization insensitive gain, and the ability to fabricate high fill factor two-dimensional arrays on a single semiconductor chip. These devices are still in the early stages of research, though promising preamplifier results have been demonstrated. Further extensions to VCSOA technology are the demonstration of wavelength tunable devices. These MEMS-tunable vertical-cavity SOAs utilize a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based tuning mechanism for wide and continuous

tuning of the peak gain wavelength of the amplifier. SOAs has a more rapid gain response, which is in the order of 1 to 100ps.

Raman amplifier
Main article: Raman amplification In a Raman amplifier, the signal is intensified by Raman amplification. Unlike the EDFA and SOA the amplification effect is achieved by a nonlinear interaction between the signal and a pump laser within an optical fiber. There are two types of Raman amplifier: distributed and lumped. A distributed Raman amplifier is one in which the transmission fiber is utilised as the gain medium by multiplexing a pump wavelength with signal wavelength, while a lumped Raman amplifier utilises a dedicated, shorter length of fiber to provide amplification. In the case of a lumped Raman amplifier highly nonlinear fiber with a small core is utilised to increase the interaction between signal and pump wavelengths and thereby reduce the length of fiber required. The pump light may be coupled into the transmission fiber in the same direction as the signal (co-directional pumping), in the opposite direction (contra-directional pumping) or both. Contra-directional pumping is more common as the transfer of noise from the pump to the signal is reduced. The pump power required for Raman amplification is higher than that required by the EDFA, with in excess of 500 mW being required to achieve useful levels of gain in a distributed amplifier. Lumped amplifiers, where the pump light can be safely contained to avoid safety implications of high optical powers, may use over 1W of optical power. The principal advantage of Raman amplification is its ability to provide distributed amplification within the transmission fiber, thereby increasing the length of spans between amplifier and regeneration sites. The amplification bandwidth of Raman amplifiers is defined by the pump wavelengths utilised and so amplification can be provided over wider, and different, regions than may be possible with other amplifier types which rely on dopants and device design to define the amplification 'window'. Note: The text of an earlier version of this article was taken from the public domain Federal Standard 1037C.

Optical parametric amplifier

An optical parametric amplifier allows the amplification of a weak Signal-Impulse in a noncentrosymmetric nonlinear medium (e.g. BBO). In contrast to the previously mentioned amplifiers, which are mostly used in telecommunication environments, this type finds its main application in expanding the frequency tunability of ultrafast solid-state lasers (e.g. Ti:sapphire). By using a noncollinear interaction geometry Optical Parametric Amplifiers are capable of extremely broad amplification bandwidth

Stimulated emission

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search In optics, stimulated emission is the process by which an atomic electron (or an excited molecular state) interacting with an electromagnetic wave of a certain frequency may drop to a lower energy level, transferring its energy to that field. A photon created in this manner has the same phase, frequency, polarization, and direction of travel as the photons of the incident wave. This is in contrast to spontaneous emission which occurs without regard to the ambient electromagnetic field. However the process is identical in form to atomic absorption in which the energy of an absorbed photon causes an identical but opposite atomic transition: from the lower level to a higher energy level. In normal media at thermal equilibrium, absorption exceeds stimulated emission because there are more electrons in the lower energy states than in the higher energy states. However when a population inversion is present the rate of stimulated emission exceeds that of absorption, and a net optical amplification can be achieved. Such a gain medium, along with an optical resonator, is at the heart of a laser or maser. Lacking a feedback mechanism, laser amplifiers and superluminescent sources also function on the basis of stimulated emission. Stimulated emission was a theoretical discovery by Einstein [1] within the framework of quantum mechanics, wherein the emission is described in terms of photons that are the quanta of the EM field. Stimulated emission can also be described classically however, without reference to either photons, or the quantum-mechanics of matter.[2]

Contents

1 Overview 2 Mathematical model 3 Stimulated emission cross section 4 Optical amplification o 4.1 Small signal gain equation o 4.2 Saturation intensity o 4.3 General gain equation o 4.4 Small signal approximation o 4.5 Large signal asymptotic behavior 5 References 6 See also

Overview
Electrons and how they interact with electromagnetic fields are important in our understanding of chemistry and physics. In the classical view, the energy of an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus is larger for orbits further from the nucleus of an atom. However, quantum mechanical effects force electrons to take on discrete positions in orbitals. Thus, electrons are found in specific energy levels of an atom, two of which are shown below:

When an electron absorbs energy either from light (photons) or heat (phonons), it receives that incident quanta of energy. But transitions are only allowed in between discrete energy levels such as the two shown above. This leads to emission lines and absorption lines. When an electron is excited from a lower to a higher energy level, it will not stay that way forever. An electron in an excited state may decay to a lower energy state which is not occupied, according to a particular time constant characterizing that transition. When such an electron decays without external influence, emitting a photon, that is called "spontaneous emission". The phase associated with the photon that is emitted is random. A material with many atoms in such an excited state may thus result in radiation which is very spectrally limited (centered around one wavelength of light), but the individual photons would have no common phase relationship and would emanate in random directions. This is the mechanism of fluorescence and thermal emission. An external electromagnetic field at a frequency associated with a transition can affect the quantum mechanical state of the atom. As the electron in the atom makes a transition between two stationary states (neither of which shows a dipole field), it enters a transition state which does have a dipole field, and which acts like a small electric dipole, and this dipole oscillates at a characteristic frequency. In response to the external electric field at this frequency, the probability of the atom entering this transition state is greatly increased. Thus, the rate of transitions between two stationary states is enhanced beyond that due to spontaneous emission. Such a transition to the higher state is called absorption, and it destroys an incident photon (the photon's energy goes into powering the increased energy of the higher state). A transition from the higher to a lower energy state, however, produces an additional photon; this is the process of stimulated emission.

Mathematical model
Stimulated emission can be modelled mathematically by considering an atom that may be in one of two electronic energy states, a lower level state (possibly the ground state) (1) and an excited state (2), with energies E1 and E2 respectively.

If the atom is in the excited state, it may decay into the lower state by the process of spontaneous emission, releasing the difference in energies between the two states as a photon. The photon will have frequency and energy h, given approximately by:

where h is Planck's constant. Alternatively, if the excited-state atom is perturbed by an electric field of frequency , it may emit an additional photon of the same frequency and in phase, thus augmenting the external field, leaving the atom in the lower energy state. This process is known as stimulated emission. In a group of such atoms, if the number of atoms in the excited state is given by N2, the rate at which stimulated emission occurs is given by:

where the proportionality constant B21 is known as the Einstein B coefficient for that particular transition, and () is the radiation density of the incident field at frequency . The rate of emission is thus proportional to the number of atoms in the excited state N2, and to the density of incident photons. At the same time, there will be a process of atomic absorption which removes energy from the field while raising electrons from the lower state to the upper state. Its rate is given by an essentially identical equation:

. The rate of absorption is thus proportional to the number of atoms in the lower state, N1. Einstein showed that the coefficient for this transition must be identical to that for stimulated emission: . Thus absorption and stimulated emission are reverse processes proceeding at somewhat different rates. Another way of viewing this is to look at the net stimulated emission or absorption viewing it as a single process. The net rate of transitions from E2 to E1 due to this combined process can be found by adding their respective rates, given above:

. Thus a net power is released into the electric field equal to the photon energy h times this net transition rate. In order for this to be a positive number, indicating net stimulated emission, there must be more atoms in the excited state than in the lower level: . Otherwise

there is net absorption and the power of the wave is reduced during passage through the medium. The special condition is known as a population inversion, a rather unusual condition that must be effected in the gain medium of a laser. The notable characteristic of stimulated emission compared to everyday light sources (which depend on spontaneous emission) is that the emitted photons have the same frequency, phase, polarization, and direction of propagation as the incident photons. The photons involved are thus mutually coherent. When a population inversion ( ) is present, therefore, optical amplification of incident radiation will take place. Although energy generated by stimulated emission is always at the exact frequency of the field which has stimulated it, the above rate equation refers only to excitation at the particular optical frequency corresponding to the energy of the transition. At frequencies offset from the strength of stimulated (or spontaneous) emission will be decreased according to the socalled "line shape". Considering only homogeneous broadening affecting an atomic or molecular resonance, the spectral line shape function is described as a Lorentzian distribution:

where

is the full width at half maximum or FWHM bandwidth.

The peak value of the Lorentzian line shape occurs at the line center, . A line shape function can be normalized so that its value at is unity; in the case of a Lorentzian we obtain:

. Thus stimulated emission at frequencies away from is reduced by this factor. In practice there may also be broadening of the line shape due to inhomogeneous broadening, most notably due to the Doppler effect resulting from the distribution of velocities in a gas at a certain temperature. This has a Gaussian shape and reduces the peak strength of the line shape function. In a practical problem the full line shape function can be computed through a convolution of the individual line shape functions involved. Therefore optical amplification will add power to an incident optical field at frequency at a rate given by: .

Stimulated emission cross section

The stimulated emission cross section (in square meters) is

where A21 is the Einstein A coefficient (in radians per second), is the wavelength (in meters), n is the refractive index of the medium (dimensionless), and g() is the spectral line shape function (in seconds).

Optical amplification
Under certain conditions, stimulated emission can provide a physical mechanism for optical amplification. An external source of energy stimulates atoms in the ground state to transition to the excited state, creating what is called a population inversion. When light of the appropriate frequency passes through the inverted medium, the photons stimulate the excited atoms to emit additional photons of the same frequency, phase, and direction, resulting in an amplification of the input intensity. The population inversion, in units of atoms per cubic meter, is

where g1 and g2 are the degeneracies of energy levels 1 and 2, respectively.

Small signal gain equation

The intensity (in watts per square meter) of the stimulated emission is governed by the following differential equation:

as long as the intensity I(z) is small enough so that it does not have a significant effect on the magnitude of the population inversion. Grouping the first two factors together, this equation simplifies as

where

is the small-signal gain coefficient (in units of radians per meter). We can solve the differential equation using separation of variables:

Integrating, we find:

or

where is the optical intensity of the input signal (in watts per square meter).

Saturation intensity
The saturation intensity IS is defined as the input intensity at which the gain of the optical amplifier drops to exactly half of the small-signal gain. We can compute the saturation intensity as

where h is Planck's constant, and S is the saturation time constant, which depends[citation needed] on the spontaneous emission lifetimes of the various transitions between the energy levels related to the amplification. is the frequency in Hz

General gain equation

The general form of the gain equation, which applies regardless of the input intensity, derives from the general differential equation for the intensity I as a function of position z in the gain medium:

where is saturation intensity. To solve, we first rearrange the equation in order to separate the variables, intensity I and position z:

Integrating both sides, we obtain

or

The gain G of the amplifier is defined as the optical intensity I at position z divided by the input intensity:

Substituting this definition into the prior equation, we find the general gain equation:

Small signal approximation

In the special case where the input signal is small compared to the saturation intensity, in other words,

then the general gain equation gives the small signal gain as

or

which is identical to the small signal gain equation (see above).

Large signal asymptotic behavior

For large input signals, where

the gain approaches unity

and the general gain equation approaches a linear asymptote:

Population inversion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search In physics, specifically statistical mechanics, a population inversion occurs when a system (such as a group of atoms or molecules) exists in a state with more members in an excited state than in lower energy states. The concept is of fundamental importance in laser science because the production of a population inversion is a necessary step in the workings of a standard laser.

Contents

1 Boltzmann distributions and thermal equilibrium 2 The interaction of light with matter o 2.1 Absorption o 2.2 Spontaneous emission o 2.3 Stimulated emission 3 Selection rules 4 Creating a population inversion o 4.1 Three-level lasers o 4.2 Four-level lasers 5 Other methods of creating a population inversion 6 See also 7 References

Boltzmann distributions and thermal equilibrium

To understand the concept of a population inversion, it is necessary to understand some thermodynamics and the way that light interacts with matter. To do so, it is useful to consider a very simple assembly of atoms forming a laser medium. Assume there are a group of N atoms, each of which is capable of being in one of two energy states, either 1. The ground state, with energy E1; or 2. The excited state, with energy E2, with E2 > E1.

The number of these atoms which are in the ground state is given by N1, and the number in the excited state N2. Since there are N atoms in total,

The energy difference between the two states, given by

determines the characteristic frequency 12 of light which will interact with the atoms; This is given by the relation

h being Planck's constant. If the group of atoms is in thermal equilibrium, it can be shown from thermodynamics that the ratio of the number of atoms in each state is given by a Boltzmann distribution:

where T is the thermodynamic temperature of the group of atoms, and k is Boltzmann's constant. We may calculate the ratio of the populations of the two states at room temperature (T 300 K) for an energy difference E that corresponds to light of a frequency corresponding to visible light ( 51014 Hz). In this case E = E2 - E1 2.07 eV, and kT 0.026 eV. Since E2 - E1 kT, it follows that the argument of the exponential in the equation above is a large negative number, and as such N2/N1 is vanishingly small; i.e., there are almost no atoms in the excited state. When in thermal equilibrium, then, it is seen that the lower energy state is more populated than the higher energy state, and this is the normal state of the system. As T increases, the number of electrons in the high-energy state (N2) increases, but N2 never exceeds N1 for a system at thermal equilibrium; rather, at infinite temperature, the populations N2 and N1 become equal. In other words, a population inversion (N2/N1 > 1) can never exist for a system at thermal equilibrium. To achieve population inversion therefore requires pushing the system into a non-equilibrated state.

The interaction of light with matter

There are three types of possible interactions between a system of atoms and light that are of interest:

Absorption
Main article: Absorption (optics) If light (photons) of frequency 12 pass through the group of atoms, there is a possibility of the light being absorbed by atoms which are in the ground state, which will cause them to be

excited to the higher energy state. The probability of absorption is proportional to the radiation intensity of the light, and also to the number of atoms currently in the ground state, N1 .

Spontaneous emission
Main article: Spontaneous emission If a collection of atoms are in the excited state, spontaneous decay events to the ground state will occur at a rate proportional to N2, the number of atoms in the excited state. The energy difference between the two states E21 is emitted from the atom as a photon of frequency 21 as given by the frequency-energy relation above. The photons are emitted stochastically, and there is no fixed phase relationship between photons emitted from a group of excited atoms; in other words, spontaneous emission is incoherent. In the absence of other processes, the number of atoms in the excited state at time t, is given by

where N2(0) is the number of excited atoms at time t = 0, and 21 is the lifetime of the transition between the two states.

Stimulated emission
Main article: Stimulated emission If an atom is already in the excited state, it may be perturbed by the passage of a photon that has a frequency 21 corresponding to the energy gap E of the excited state to ground state transition. In this case, the excited atom relaxes to the ground state, and is induced to produce a second photon of frequency 21. The original photon is not absorbed by the atom, and so the result is two photons of the same frequency. This process is known as stimulated emission.

Specifically, an excited atom will act like a small electric dipole which will oscillate with the external field provided. One of the consequences of this oscillation is that it encourages electrons to decay to the lowest energy state. When this happens due to the presence of the electromagnetic field from a photon, a photon is released in the same phase and direction as the "stimulating" photon, and is called stimulated emission.

The rate at which stimulated emission occurs is proportional to the number of atoms N2 in the excited state, and the radiation density of the light. The base probability of a photon causing stimulated emission in a single excited atom was shown by Albert Einstein to be exactly equal to the probability of a photon being absorbed by an atom in the ground state. Therefore, when the numbers of atoms in the ground and excited states are equal, the rate of stimulated emission is equal to the rate of absorption for a given radiation density. The critical detail of stimulated emission is that the induced photon has the same frequency and phase as the incident photon. In other words, the two photons are coherent. It is this property that allows optical amplification, and the production of a laser system. During the operation of a laser, all three light-matter interactions described above are taking place. Initially, atoms are energized from the ground state to the excited state by a process called pumping, described below. Some of these atoms decay via spontaneous emission, releasing incoherent light as photons of frequency, . These photons are fed back into the laser medium, usually by an optical resonator. Some of these photons are absorbed by the atoms in the ground state, and the photons are lost to the laser process. However, some photons cause stimulated emission in excited-state atoms, releasing another coherent photon. In effect, this results in optical amplification. If the number of photons being amplified per unit time is greater than the number of photons being absorbed, then the net result is a continuously increasing number of photons being produced; the laser medium is said to have a gain of greater than unity. Recall from the descriptions of absorption and stimulated emission above that the rates of these two processes are proportional to the number of atoms in the ground and excited states, N1 and N2, respectively. If the ground state has a higher population than the excited state (N1 > N2), the process of absorption dominates and there is a net attenuation of photons. If the populations of the two states are the same (N1 = N2), the rate of absorption of light exactly balances the rate of emission; the medium is then said to be optically transparent. If the higher energy state has a greater population than the lower energy state (N1 < N2), then the emission process dominates, and light in the system undergoes a net increase in intensity. It is thus clear that to produce a faster rate of stimulated emissions than absorptions, it is

required that the ratio of the populations of the two states is such that N2/N1 > 1; In other words, a population inversion is required for laser operation.

Selection rules
Main article: Selection rule Many transitions involving electromagnetic radiation are strictly forbidden under quantum mechanics. The allowed transitions are described by so-called selection rules, which describe the conditions under which a radiative transition is allowed. For instance, transitions are only allowed if S = 0, S being the total spin angular momentum of the system. In real materials other effects, such as interactions with the crystal lattice, intervene to circumvent the formal rules. In these systems the forbidden transitions can occur, but usually at slower rates than allowed transitions. A classic example is phosphorescence where a material has a ground state with S = 0, an excited state with S = 0, and an intermediate state with S = 1. The transition from the intermediate state to the ground state by emission of light is slow because of the selection rules. Thus emission may continue after the external illumination is removed. In contrast fluorescence in materials is characterized by emission which ceases when the external illumination is removed. Transitions which do not involve the absorption or emission of radiation are not affected by selection rules. Radiationless transition between levels, such as between the excited S = 0 and S = 1 states, may proceed quickly enough to siphon off a portion of the S = 0 population before it spontaneously returns to the ground state. The existence of intermediate states in materials, as we will see, is essential to the technique of optical pumping of lasers.

Creating a population inversion

As described above, a population inversion is required for laser operation, but cannot be achieved in our theoretical group of atoms with two energy-levels when they are in thermal equilibrium. In fact, any method by which the atoms are directly and continuously excited from the ground state to the excited state (such as optical absorption) will eventually reach equilibrium with the de-exciting processes of spontaneous and stimulated emission. At best, an equal population of the two states, N1 = N2 = N/2, can be achieved, resulting in optical transparency but no net optical gain.

Three-level lasers

A three-level laser energy diagram. To achieve non-equilibrium conditions, an indirect method of populating the excited state must be used. To understand how this is done, we may use a slightly more realistic model, that of a three-level laser. Again consider a group of N atoms, this time with each atom able to exist in any of three energy states, levels 1, 2 and 3, with energies E1, E2, and E3, and populations N1, N2, and N3, respectively. Note that E1 < E2 < E3; that is, the energy of level 2 lies between that of the ground state and level 3. Initially, the system of atoms is at thermal equilibrium, and the majority of the atoms will be in the ground state, i.e., N1 N, N2 N3 0. If we now subject the atoms to light of a frequency , the process of optical absorption will excite the atoms from the ground state to level 3. This process is called pumping and does not necessarily always directly involve light absorption; other methods of exciting the laser medium, such as electrical discharge or chemical reactions, may be used. The level 3 is sometimes referred to as the pump level or pump band, and the energy transition E1 E3 as the pump transition, which is shown as the arrow marked P in the diagram on the right. If we continue pumping the atoms, we will excite an appreciable number of them into level 3, such that N3 > 0. In a medium suitable for laser operation, we require these excited atoms to quickly decay to level 2. The energy released in this transition may be emitted as a photon (spontaneous emission), however in practice the 32 transition (labeled R in the diagram) is usually radiationless, with the energy being transferred to vibrational motion (heat) of the host material surrounding the atoms, without the generation of a photon. An atom in level 2 may decay by spontaneous emission to the ground state, releasing a photon of frequency 12 (given by E2 E1 = h12), which is shown as the transition L, called the laser transition in the diagram. If the lifetime of this transition, 21 is much longer than the lifetime of the radiationless 3 2 transition 32 (if 21 32, known as a favourable lifetime ratio), the population of the E3 will be essentially zero (N3 0) and a population of excited state atoms will accumulate in level 2 (N2 > 0). If over half the N atoms can be accumulated in this state, this will exceed the population of the ground state N1. A population inversion (N2 > N1 ) has thus been achieved between level 1 and 2, and optical amplification at the frequency 21 can be obtained.

Because at least half the population of atoms must be excited from the ground state to obtain a population inversion, the laser medium must be very strongly pumped. This makes threelevel lasers rather inefficient, despite being the first type of laser to be discovered (based on a ruby laser medium, by Theodore Maiman in 1960). A three-level system could also have a radiative transition between level 3 and 2, and a non-radiative transition between 2 and 1. In this case, the pumping requirements are weaker. In practice, most lasers are four-level lasers, described below.

Four-level lasers

A four-level laser energy diagram. Here, there are four energy levels, energies E1, E2, E3, E4, and populations N1, N2, N3, N4, respectively. The energies of each level are such that E1 < E2 < E3 < E4. In this system, the pumping transition P excites the atoms in the ground state (level 1) into the pump band (level 4). From level 4, the atoms again decay by a fast, non-radiative transition Ra into the level 3. Since the lifetime of the laser transition L is long compared to that of Ra (32 43), a population accumulates in level 3 (the upper laser level), which may relax by spontaneous or stimulated emission into level 2 (the lower laser level). This level likewise has a fast, non-radiative decay Rb into the ground state. As before, the presence of a fast, radiationless decay transitions result in population of the pump band being quickly depleted (N4 0). In a four-level system, any atom in the lower laser level E2 is also quickly de-excited, leading to a negligible population in that state (N2 0). This is important, since any appreciable population accumulating in level 3, the upper laser level, will form a population inversion with respect to level 2. That is, as long as N3 > 0, then N3 > N2 and a population inversion is achieved. Thus optical amplification, and laser operation, can take place at a frequency of 32 (E3-E2 = h32). Since only a few atoms must be excited into the upper laser level to form a population inversion, a four-level laser is much more efficient than a three-level one, and most practical lasers are of this type. In reality, many more than four energy levels may be involved in the laser process, with complex excitation and relaxation processes involved between these levels. In particular, the pump band may consist of several distinct energy levels, or a continuum of levels, which allow optical pumping of the medium over a wide range of wavelengths.

Note that in both three- and four-level lasers, the energy of the pumping transition is greater than that of the laser transition. This means that, if the laser is optically pumped, the frequency of the pumping light must be greater than that of the resulting laser light. In other words, the pump wavelength is shorter than the laser wavelength. It is possible in some media to use multiple photon absorptions between multiple lower-energy transitions to reach the pump level; such lasers are called up-conversion lasers. While in many lasers the laser process involves the transition of atoms between different electronic energy states, as described in the model above, this is not the only mechanism that can result in laser action. For example, there are many common lasers (e.g., dye lasers, carbon dioxide lasers) where the laser medium consists of complete molecules, and energy states correspond to vibrational and rotational modes of oscillation of the molecules. This is the case with water masers, that occur in nature. In some media it is possible, by imposing an additional optical or microwave field, to use quantum coherence effects to reduce the likelihood of an excited-state to ground-state transition. This technique, known as lasing without inversion, allows optical amplification to take place without producing a population inversion between the two states.

Other methods of creating a population inversion

Stimulated emission was first observed in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum, giving rise to the acronym MASER for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. In the microwave region, the Boltzmann distribution of molecules among energy states is such that, at room temperature all states are populated almost equally. To create a population inversion under these conditions, it is necessary to selectively remove some atoms or molecules from the system based on differences in properties. For instance, in a hydrogen Maser, the well-known "21cm wave" transition in atomic hydrogen, where the lone electron flips its spin state from parallel to the nuclear spin to antiparallel, can be used to create a population inversion because the parallel state has a magnetic moment and the antiparallel state does not. A strong inhomogeneous magnetic field will separate out atoms in the higher energy state from a beam of mixed state atoms. The separated population represents a population inversion which can exhibit stimulated emissions

Optical fibers can guide light for a very long distance by confining the light within the core region. However, no matter how transparent the fiber material is, light moving through the fiber will be attenuated gradually. In order to amplify this attenuated light, we use optical fiber amplifiers. Optical fiber amplifiers doped with erbium have been developed and utilized for glass optical fibers that are used as submarine cables and others. We have proposed polymer optical fiber amplifiers as amplifiers to be used for large-diameter polymer optical fibers. While the diameter of the core of glass fibers is less than 10 microns, the core diameter of polymer fibers is 100-500 microns. The large diameter is a strong point of polymer optical fibers as it enables easy alignment of fibers and light sources, but it makes amplification difficult in principle. In order to amplify light we dope fibers with

fluorescent substances, pump them by light and inject signal light of the same wavelength as the emitted fluorescence. Stimulated by the signal light, synchronizing fluorescence is emitted so that the light is amplified. This amplification becomes more efficient as the pumping light intensity density (light intensity per unit cross-sectional area within the fiber core) increases. Therefore, light of very high intensity must be injected into optical fibers with large diameter in order to obtain high light intensity density. To solve this problem, we have designed and selected fluorescent substances (organic dye and rare-earth chelate) that can amplify light even with very low pumping light intensity, and introduced them into polymer optical fibers. We reported the polymer optical fiber amplifier doped with organic dye in 1992. This was the world's first graded-index polymer optical fiber amplifier whose refractive index distribution and organic dye concentration become higher radially toward the core. By using this polymer optical fiber amplifier of only 90-cm length, we succeeded in amplifying signal light (pulsed light) by 4000 times. However, while we achieved success in amplifying pulsed light, amplification of continuous light is required in order to utilize the amplifiers in optical communications system. But it is difficult to amplify continuous light with organic dye due to its inherent properties. We expect that innovative kind of organic dye will appear in future. Aiming for amplification of continuous light, we have newly designed "rare-earth chelate." So far we have fabricated graded-index polymer optical fiber amplifiers doped with rare-earth chelate such as erbium, neodymium and europium, and even confirmed a phenomenon called "superfluorescence" which leads to amplification. In future, we will design more efficient rare-earth chelate and fabricate fibers with base material that can improve the efficiency of amplification. Amplifiers doped with organic dye can be made into fiber lasers by adding creative ideas for concentration of organic dye, length of fibers, and methods to irradiate them with pumping light. The above photo shows a fiber laser of 5-cm length being irradiated with pumping light from the sides and causing laser oscillation. Now solid-state lasers by semiconductors are being used in various fields, but the oscillation wavelength of these lasers depends on properties of the semiconductors. When the wavelength of required light cannot be obtained with usual inexpensive semiconductor lasers, lasers using a dye solution called "dye lasers" have been employed mainly. When using a dye laser, we choose organic dye appropriate to the required oscillation wavelength, dissolve the dye in several liters of organic solvent, and use it while circulating the solution. Therefore, if we want to change the oscillation wavelength, it is necessary to drain the dye solution out, clean carefully, and circulate new dye solution, which is a very troublesome procedure. However, if we use a polymer optical fiber laser, we can change the oscillation wavelength easily and cleanly only by exchanging the 5-cm fiber. This laser will be suitable when simple light source with relatively wide wavelength range is needed. On this research we received the award for the best original paper by the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 1998. We also have been invited to talk on this topic at international conferences sponsored by SPIE and others.