Abstract
Lasers may emit continuously or in pulses of various durations, produced in different ways. Their emission bandwidth ranges from fixed and extremely narrow to tunable across a wide range. This chapter explains these differences. The most commercially important short‐pulsed molecular gas lasers are based on a family of short‐lived diatomic molecules called excimers, which give the lasers their name. Semiconductor lasers work quite differently than the solid‐state lasers, which is why laser specialists do not classify semiconductors as solid‐state. The free‐electron laser is large and complex, but it is tunable across an exceptionally broad range of wavelengths, making it attractive for research. Energy storage within a laser depends on the physics of the laser medium as well as the pumping. The attraction of optical pumping for wavelength conversion is that it converts cheap photons from readily available pump lasers into more valuable photons at hard‐to‐get wavelengths.
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