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I removed this:
At first, ruby lasers used natural rubies, making the commercial and scientific use of lasers a very expense venture. However, the application of lasers become more viable with the invention of the synthetic ruby by John M. Burdick in 1949 (U.S. Patent 2488507), working for Linde Air Products, which was at that time a division of Union Carbide.
since it pre-dates the actual invention of the laser. -- Bob Mellish 21:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if its important enough to mention, but the illustration of the first laser is slightly incorrect. The ruby Maiman used in his first laser was cube shaped. Also, a perfect, (synthetic), ruby will cleave into a perfect square whith exteremly flat ends, eliminating the need for extensive polishing and shaping, which made it the perfect choice for Maiman to use. Zaereth ( talk) 01:00, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
This is purely a safety concern, but it may be worthy to note in the lede that if someone intends to "watch carefully" the target area of a high pulsed power laser, they had better have the proper safety glasses on. Even reflected radiation can be harmful, especially at optical wavelengths. Zaereth ( talk) 17:10, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
This article now mentions only pulsed ruby lasers, as invented by Maiman in 1960. However the article on 2009 Nobel laureate Willard Boyle says that he developed a continuous ruby laser with Don Nelson in 1962. Should this be mentioned in another section? Are present-day ruby lasers pulsed or CW or both? What are the uses of each? Dirac66 ( talk) 20:19, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I see from Zaereth's answers that CW ruby lasers exist and have been used in the past, so they could be mentioned in the article which now says flatly that "Ruby lasers produce pulses ..." Perhaps this statement needs a qualifier "Most" or "The most useful" at the beginning, plus a mention of the CW work. One could add the reasons given by SRLeffler why pulsed lasers are preferred. Not being a laser expert, I will not attempt to edit this article myself.
As for Goldman as inventor, what the book linked by Zaereth actually says is that Goldman first used the CW ruby laser for medical applications. This is not the same as inventing the CW ruby laser. I searched Wiki for Leon Goldman and found him described as a surgeon, in the article on his daughter - Senator Dianne Feinstein#Early life! It seems more plausible that a physicist (Willard Boyle) would have developed the laser, and that a surgeon (Goldman) then applied it to medicine. Dirac66 ( talk) 03:15, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I notice that the article on Willard Boyle does not say that he developed a continuous-wave ruby laser, but rather that he developed the first "continuously operating" one. These are not necessarily the same thing. A laser that produces a continuing series of pulses is "continuously operating", but not CW.-- Srleffler ( talk) 03:57, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
As I suspected, Nelson and Boyle's laser was "continuously operating", but not CW:
"Continuous" in the normal sense means that the laser operates for lengthy periods, for instance, for minutes or hours. It does not necessarily mean that the emission is stable. For the continuously pumped ruby laser of NELSON and BOYLE, for instance, it consisted of a sequence of pulses, the so-called spikes. Such a sequence of pulses may
be explained as relaxation oscillations.
—Gürs, K. (1965). "Solid state lasers with CW emission". Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Physik. 16 (1). Birkhäuser Basel: 49–62. doi: 10.1007/BF01589043. ISSN 0044-2275.
{{ cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter|month=
ignored ( help)
Nelson and Boyle's paper:
Their ruby is tiny: 0.61 mm in diameter by 11.5 mm long. It was cooled with liquid nitrogen. The output is an irregular train of spikes ("relaxation oscillations"). They did not at the time understand why.-- Srleffler ( talk) 04:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate this information in a paragraph or two, but don't want to confuse "continuous" with "continuous wave." I've found many sources which refer to "continuous wave ruby," "continuous operating ruby," and a few "quasi-cw ruby." (That last source seemed a bit dubious.) I don't have a hard copy of Koechner's book, and can't access the desired pages from it on google.
One of the books I find to be extremely good when it comes to laser info is Principle's of lasers, by Oratio Svelto, in which he explicitly states on page 37 that, "Ruby laser's can also run cw, transversely pumped by a high-pressure mercury lamp, or longitudinally pumped by an argon-ion laser." According to the book, and confirmed in Koechner's book on page 2, relaxation oscillations are normal even in pulsed ruby, unless the system is q-switched so that the population inversion can reach high values before lasing begins.
So it's obvious that one source uses the term cw ruby, but not quasi-cw. I don't know if Koechner's Solid state laser engineering has any more info on it. I'm not exactly sure if quasi-cw is the correct term for ruby, as it seems that it is more like a pure three-level medium than what is described as quasi three-level. Honestly, I'm not too clear on the what the difference between cw and quasi-cw in terms of output, although there is a clear difference in input. I'm tempted to simply call it continuously operating and leave it at that ... perhaps also giving a brief explanation of the relaxation oscillation effect. Does anyone have any ideas on how to word this? Zaereth ( talk) 01:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
I think that the section added today about the 2010 demonstration of Maiman's original laser would be better placed in the article on Maiman. Dirac66 ( talk) 18:43, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
This article currently claims that someone "stated that pink ruby, having a lowest energy-state that was too close to the ground-state, would require too much pumping energy for laser operation, suggesting red ruby as a possible alternative."
This raises several questions that the article does not adequately address.
-- 68.0.124.33 ( talk) 15:23, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
The image at the top of this page shows a small, apparently glass, tube running parallel to the ruby rod. It is between the lower part of the rod and the surrounding flash tube. It appears to have an electrical wire running back to the contacts on the right.
This object does not appear in the actual model shown later, nor in any of the other images. It is not described in the text or any of the image captions here or the commons.
Anyone know what this is? I suspect it is the capacitor shown in some diagrams, but I'm not certain. Maury Markowitz ( talk) 14:33, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
So the black cylinder on the right that the wire connected to is not a capacitor? Anyone know what it is? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 12:33, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Ok, last question: in this case the trigger wire runs near the tube only on one side, how did this result in the entire tube ionizing? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 18:48, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||
|
I removed this:
At first, ruby lasers used natural rubies, making the commercial and scientific use of lasers a very expense venture. However, the application of lasers become more viable with the invention of the synthetic ruby by John M. Burdick in 1949 (U.S. Patent 2488507), working for Linde Air Products, which was at that time a division of Union Carbide.
since it pre-dates the actual invention of the laser. -- Bob Mellish 21:29, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if its important enough to mention, but the illustration of the first laser is slightly incorrect. The ruby Maiman used in his first laser was cube shaped. Also, a perfect, (synthetic), ruby will cleave into a perfect square whith exteremly flat ends, eliminating the need for extensive polishing and shaping, which made it the perfect choice for Maiman to use. Zaereth ( talk) 01:00, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
This is purely a safety concern, but it may be worthy to note in the lede that if someone intends to "watch carefully" the target area of a high pulsed power laser, they had better have the proper safety glasses on. Even reflected radiation can be harmful, especially at optical wavelengths. Zaereth ( talk) 17:10, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
This article now mentions only pulsed ruby lasers, as invented by Maiman in 1960. However the article on 2009 Nobel laureate Willard Boyle says that he developed a continuous ruby laser with Don Nelson in 1962. Should this be mentioned in another section? Are present-day ruby lasers pulsed or CW or both? What are the uses of each? Dirac66 ( talk) 20:19, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I see from Zaereth's answers that CW ruby lasers exist and have been used in the past, so they could be mentioned in the article which now says flatly that "Ruby lasers produce pulses ..." Perhaps this statement needs a qualifier "Most" or "The most useful" at the beginning, plus a mention of the CW work. One could add the reasons given by SRLeffler why pulsed lasers are preferred. Not being a laser expert, I will not attempt to edit this article myself.
As for Goldman as inventor, what the book linked by Zaereth actually says is that Goldman first used the CW ruby laser for medical applications. This is not the same as inventing the CW ruby laser. I searched Wiki for Leon Goldman and found him described as a surgeon, in the article on his daughter - Senator Dianne Feinstein#Early life! It seems more plausible that a physicist (Willard Boyle) would have developed the laser, and that a surgeon (Goldman) then applied it to medicine. Dirac66 ( talk) 03:15, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
I notice that the article on Willard Boyle does not say that he developed a continuous-wave ruby laser, but rather that he developed the first "continuously operating" one. These are not necessarily the same thing. A laser that produces a continuing series of pulses is "continuously operating", but not CW.-- Srleffler ( talk) 03:57, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
As I suspected, Nelson and Boyle's laser was "continuously operating", but not CW:
"Continuous" in the normal sense means that the laser operates for lengthy periods, for instance, for minutes or hours. It does not necessarily mean that the emission is stable. For the continuously pumped ruby laser of NELSON and BOYLE, for instance, it consisted of a sequence of pulses, the so-called spikes. Such a sequence of pulses may
be explained as relaxation oscillations.
—Gürs, K. (1965). "Solid state lasers with CW emission". Zeitschrift für Angewandte Mathematik und Physik. 16 (1). Birkhäuser Basel: 49–62. doi: 10.1007/BF01589043. ISSN 0044-2275.
{{ cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter|month=
ignored ( help)
Nelson and Boyle's paper:
Their ruby is tiny: 0.61 mm in diameter by 11.5 mm long. It was cooled with liquid nitrogen. The output is an irregular train of spikes ("relaxation oscillations"). They did not at the time understand why.-- Srleffler ( talk) 04:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate this information in a paragraph or two, but don't want to confuse "continuous" with "continuous wave." I've found many sources which refer to "continuous wave ruby," "continuous operating ruby," and a few "quasi-cw ruby." (That last source seemed a bit dubious.) I don't have a hard copy of Koechner's book, and can't access the desired pages from it on google.
One of the books I find to be extremely good when it comes to laser info is Principle's of lasers, by Oratio Svelto, in which he explicitly states on page 37 that, "Ruby laser's can also run cw, transversely pumped by a high-pressure mercury lamp, or longitudinally pumped by an argon-ion laser." According to the book, and confirmed in Koechner's book on page 2, relaxation oscillations are normal even in pulsed ruby, unless the system is q-switched so that the population inversion can reach high values before lasing begins.
So it's obvious that one source uses the term cw ruby, but not quasi-cw. I don't know if Koechner's Solid state laser engineering has any more info on it. I'm not exactly sure if quasi-cw is the correct term for ruby, as it seems that it is more like a pure three-level medium than what is described as quasi three-level. Honestly, I'm not too clear on the what the difference between cw and quasi-cw in terms of output, although there is a clear difference in input. I'm tempted to simply call it continuously operating and leave it at that ... perhaps also giving a brief explanation of the relaxation oscillation effect. Does anyone have any ideas on how to word this? Zaereth ( talk) 01:58, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
I think that the section added today about the 2010 demonstration of Maiman's original laser would be better placed in the article on Maiman. Dirac66 ( talk) 18:43, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
This article currently claims that someone "stated that pink ruby, having a lowest energy-state that was too close to the ground-state, would require too much pumping energy for laser operation, suggesting red ruby as a possible alternative."
This raises several questions that the article does not adequately address.
-- 68.0.124.33 ( talk) 15:23, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
The image at the top of this page shows a small, apparently glass, tube running parallel to the ruby rod. It is between the lower part of the rod and the surrounding flash tube. It appears to have an electrical wire running back to the contacts on the right.
This object does not appear in the actual model shown later, nor in any of the other images. It is not described in the text or any of the image captions here or the commons.
Anyone know what this is? I suspect it is the capacitor shown in some diagrams, but I'm not certain. Maury Markowitz ( talk) 14:33, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
So the black cylinder on the right that the wire connected to is not a capacitor? Anyone know what it is? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 12:33, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Ok, last question: in this case the trigger wire runs near the tube only on one side, how did this result in the entire tube ionizing? Maury Markowitz ( talk) 18:48, 1 November 2023 (UTC)