As a side note, are HeNe lasers ion lasers or aren't they? They require a starting pulse to ionize the gas, don't they?
Senior Member
As a side note, are HeNe lasers ion lasers or aren't they? They require a starting pulse to ionize the gas, don't they?
My limited understanding is that in an ion laser actaully uses ions of the host gas that are bourne from the enormous power that is passed through the gas as a lasing medium, whereas in a he-ne there is just an electrical discharge in the gas and its the atoms of the gas rather than ions of the gas that lase.
Steve Roberts or other please punt in and correct me if this is baloney!
Rob
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Creaky Old Award Winning Bastard Technologist
Argon and Krypton need a electron stripped off the atom to lase, and cadmium and neon in HeCad and HeNe just need the electron excited to a higher level orbit. Neon and Cadmium lase when the high orbit electron falls back down. The helium is only slightly ionized, and it collides with neutral neon or neutral cadmium, and transfers the energy during the collision between the atoms.
helium is easy to ionize, it only has two electrons in orbit close to the nucleus.
Argon has 18 in orbit , and thus they are much further away from the nucleus, so they need a lot more energy to strip one.
Argon and Krypton lase just before recombination of the ion and the electron.
steve
Creaky Old Award Winning Bastard Technologist
no, henes are collision lasers, and while yes the discharge is ionized, it is now where near as energetic as a ion laser plasma. A hene is a glow discharge like a neon sign, a very soft, weak discharge. You can contain a hene discharge in glass, or even plastic for a short time.
A argon ion plasma is a arc, and the plasma is hotter then the surface of the sun. The whole tube is like a welders arc inside, and the discharge is very energetic. You need very exotic high temp materials to contain a argon arc. For every watt of argon light, you need 1.1 kilowatts of input energy, where a even a big hene only needs about 2 watts.
Steve
Senior Member
Do you mean argon light as opposed to argon LASER light? Because I've got a spectra physics 163 that takes ~1.5kW and the output sure as hell isn't 1W!
Well, larger argon heads are more efficient than the smaller ones. But even so, I think he dropped a zero someplace...
Adam
Creaky Old Award Winning Bastard Technologist
Sorry forgot to mention the 2kW threshold, then its 1,1 kW/W thats small, medium or large frame number, not for aircooled.
Steve
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