El láser. Principios básicos.

Abstract

Because of its properties, the laser has become a key tool for medicine, industry, research, processing, transmission and storage of information, to mention just a few areas that have benefited. Specifically, optoelectronics, which deals with the problem of the interaction of optical radiation with matter and the corresponding devices that apply the properties and phenomena that arise in these interactions, is fed by the laser as an integral element when projecting and implementing emerging technologies. Some technologies that, from the optoelectronics, make use of the laser are the optical communications in the free space -COEL-; the optical fiber, which is imposed as means of transmission of information; the holography, photographic technique with laser light, which offers wide applications in the industry, the trade, the medicine, the seismography, the treatment of information, the dactyloscopy and a large number of other alternative possibilities. and integrated optics, which serves the ideal of integrating optoelectronic devices. In spite of its difficulties in cost and technical treatment, it is outlined as the main technological trend for the future generation of communications, information and control systems. In these systems, the laser plays a fundamental role for the operation of the different devices that make up the integrated optical circuit: photonic transistors, optical microfibers, etc., devices that will increase their refinement and decrease in size to migrate to nanometric systems of a mechanical-quantum nature, the basis for future quantum computing systems. Due to the great impact that these achievements represent for society and its ideal of welfare, it is pertinent for every engineering or basic science scholar to have a fundamental knowledge of the basic physical principles that allow the production of light characterized by its coherence, great monochromaticity, beam narrowness and intensity. In this sense, the purpose of this text is to provide a general overview of the mechanisms and operating systems that allow light to behave in the aforementioned manner. For its reading, it is recommended that the reader be familiar with the model of the atom and that of energy bands in crystalline solids and, in general, with the basic knowledge of quantum theory.