Talk:Laser construction

What makes up a compact disc?

Brian Wagner

A compact disc is composed of a 50/50 mixture of wheat and barley, baked in a baking oven to a temperature of 150 degrees Kelvin. Thanks for choosing Wikipedia!

Don Collins — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.189.201.235 (talk) 15:25, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Superluminescent lasers

"some lasers do not use an optical cavity, but instead rely on very high optical gain to produce significant amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) without requiring feedback of the light back into the gain medium. Such lasers are said to be superluminescent"

Isn't this called superradiant lasing? When the gain is so high, such as in N2 lasers, there is no need for an FP resonator...?--Deglr6328 03:35, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not exactly sure. I've seen them called superluminescent, superradiant, or superfluorescent lasers, with no clear distinction between them. And of course some people don't call them lasers at all. I'm following here: [1], which suggests "superluminescent" is most accurate, though I'll hunt for a primary source. --Bob Mellish 15:09, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Redundance to Laser

Does this article really make sense? Not only is the Lemma misleading, as it does explain the construction or design. It describes the principle of a laser. Also there is no general construction of a laser, as they are all different. But most of all, the content is exactly what belongs to Laser. 7Piguine (talk) 10:58, 1 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm no expert on lasers, but I was wondering the same thing. I guess you might want separate articles if the laser article is too long. In that case, it seems like everything about how a laser works would go here, and everything else (e.g. applications) would go in the main article. Not sure if that's what's going on here though. Danielx (talk) 04:21, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Medium produces gain?

This article says that the laser medium produces gain (and is also called the gain medium), but isn't that what the optical resonator does? If I understand how a laser works correctly, the laser medium produces light, it bounces around in the optical resonator, which makes the light more intense, until there's enough energy to emerge from one of the laser (the one with the less reflective mirror). If the optical resonator makes the light more powerful, doesn't that mean that the optical resonator is responsible for gain? Danielx (talk) 04:28, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Gain (as it is defined for a laser) is indeed just a property of the laser medium and how much it is pumped. But you get laser light only if the gain is larger than the optical losses, and these depend on the resonator. --Danh (talk) 21:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]