Lasers in Science and Technology

(This information was taken from the Distinguished Scientist Lecture Series Program 1984-1985). Dr. Bloembergen, a Nobel laureate, is the Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University. Born in Dordrecht, The Netherlands, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Leiden in 1948. He has taught at Harvard University since 1951. In 1981, Dr. Bloembergen was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with A. L. Schawlow, for their work in the development of laser spectroscopy. For his fundamental contributions, he has been honored by the National Medal of Science, the Lorentz Medal of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science, and the Medal of Honor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, in addition to many other awards and fellowships. He has directed the E. Fermi Course on onlinear Spectroscopy; and served as an editor for the Journal of Quantum Mechanics, the Journal of Applied Physics, and other professional journals. He has held visiting professorships at such institutions as the College de France and the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to almost three hundred papers on electronics and optics, he is the author of two books, Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation and Nonlinear Optics. His Work Dr. Bloembergen\u27s research has included nuclear and electronic magnetic resonance, solid state masers and lasers, and especially nonlinear optics and spectroscopy. Together with his co-workers, he developed a rigorous theory of nonlinear polarizability, the extension of Maxwell\u27s equations to include nonlinear source terms and the interaction of multiple waves in the bulk and at the boundaries of nonlinear media. This latter work led to the extension of the laws of reflection and refraction. His Lecture: December 1, 1984: Lasers in Science and Technologyhttps://digitalcommons.bard.edu/dsls_1984_1985/1001/thumbnail.jp

Nonlinear Optics and Spectroscopy

The development of masers and lasers has been reviewed in the 1964 Nobel lectures by Townes (1) and by Basov (2) and Prokhorov (3). They have sketched the evolution of the laser from their predecessors, the microwave beam and solid state masers. Lasers are sources of coherent light, characterized by a high degree of monochromaticity, high directionality and high intensity or brightness. To illustrate this last property, consider a small ruby laser with an active volume of one 1 cc. In the Q-switched mode it can emit about l0 18 photons at 694 nm wavelength in about l0-8 sec. Because the beam is diffraction limited, it can readily be focused onto an area of l0-6c m2, about ten optical wavelengths in diameter. The resulting peak flux density is l0 13 watts/cm*. Whereas 0.1 Joule is a small amount of energy, equal to that consumed by a 100 watt light bulb, or to the heat produced by a human body, each one-thousandth of a second, the power flux density of 10 terawatts/cm2 is awesome. It can be grasped by noting that the total power produced by all electric generating stations on earth is about one terawatt. (The affix "tera " is derived from the Gree

Nonlinear optics

Nicolaas Bloembergen, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics (1981), wrote Nonlinear Optics in 1964, when the field of nonlinear optics was only three years old. The available literature has since grown by at least three orders of magnitude.The vitality of Nonlinear Optics is evident from the still-growing number of scientists and engineers engaged in the study of new nonlinear phenomena and in the development of new nonlinear devices in the field of opto-electronics. This monograph should be helpful in providing a historical introduction and a general background of basic ideas both for exp