Abstract
As it happened, I did abandon ruby … for a while. But it was not because of Schawlow, not because of Daly, and not because of the pressure from George Birnbaum . It was because of Wieder.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
Wieder did not succeed in making an optically pumped maser. But, in 1962, Don Devore , Irnee D’Haenens, and Charlie Asawa did make such a device by optically exciting a ruby maser crystal with a ruby laser at Hughes.
- 2.
The quantum efficiency for a fluorescent crystal is the number of fluorescent photons emitted, divided by the number of pumping photons. That is, for every marble put on the table, how many marbles get into the trough and through the holes back to the ground. In the case of ruby, it would be the number of red photons radiated out, compared to the number of green photons absorbed.
- 3.
Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 30, no. 11, pp. 995–996, November 1959.
- 4.
Editor’s note: In March, 2017, Irwin Wieder wrote Kathleen Maiman : “I initiated optical pumping experiments in ruby in 1957 as part of a US Air Force contract to make new and improved masers. Measuring the quantum efficiency of ruby would not have been relevant to the experiment as it was not adjustable. Nevertheless, I undertook a 1-hour estimation of QE in ruby and got 10%. Experts in the field of optical pumping were very skeptical of my result, so I lowered my estimate down to 1%.” For a more detailed account, see Jeff Hecht, Beam: The Race to Make the Laser (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 97–99.
- 5.
This term means the temperature to which a fictitious hot body would have to be heated to put out enough light to pump the ruby.
- 6.
For ruby, the useful pump radiation is primarily in the green and secondarily in the blue-violet regions of the spectrum.
- 7.
In a four-level system, the system insisted upon by Schawlow and other laser researchers, the brightness requirement for a laser-pumping lamp does depend on the crystal dimensions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Maiman, T.H. (2018). Obstacles and Solutions. In: The Laser Inventor. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61940-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61940-8_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61939-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61940-8
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)