Pulsed Lasers Blog Posts

A common problem for HeNe laser customers is the issue of polarization switching, which is the sudden change of the polarization of different modes, especially in shorter tubes, which can be particularly detrimental when operating frequency stabilized HeNe laser tubes. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as ‘mode hopping.’ However, this is not accurate. While somewhat similar to polarization switching, mode hopping involves the laser’s operation on a single resonator mode, which suddenly switches to another mode, causing the optical power to switch over to this… Read More

Shortly after the invention of the first laser, a relevant application enabled by the availability of coherent light, called time-of-flight, emerged. ToF is the precise measurement of the round-trip time of a laser pulse from the source to the target object and back again, allowing you to determine the distance or the velocity of the target. By collecting the back-reflected (or back-scattered) radiation of a short pulse, initially directed to a remote target, it is possible to determine the exact position of said target, provided that the time interval between the outgoing pulse and the corresponding echo is precisely… Read More

For security purposes, ID cards often require some form of unique identifier and tamper-proof security features, designed to mitigate the potential for alteration and counterfeiting. Laser sources play an essential role in this regard, providing a means to create permanent, high-quality, and tamper-proof marks on polymeric cards. Typically, the ID cards are a multi-layer composition of poly-carbonate and PVC, with select pigments added to the inner layers of the card during fa… Read More

we will highlight another set of lasers offered here at RPMC, which are ideal for higher-order harmonic generation, allowing it to produce wavelengths from the infrared to the ultraviolet; the Sol, Wedge, and Onda from Bright Solutions.  All three of these laser sources are robust and compact, making them ideal for integration into OEM systems.  In this blog, we will highlight several of the features which make each unit uniquely suited for harmonic c… Read More

Solid-state lasers offer many advantages over other laser sources. One of their most unique benefits is the ability to produce extremely high pulse energy.  Solid-state lasers can achieve this through q-switching, which is a process where the resonator losses are periodically increased, therefore interrupting the lasing process.  Unlike other laser pulsing methodologies, q-switching is unique in that the pump source remains active while no lasing is oc… Read More

Thanks to the experience Bright Solutions has acquired in the state-of-the-art design of sub-ns DPSS lasers over the years, the Wedge family has recently been updated in terms of performance and available models. These improvements include increased average output power, and improved pulse energy stability, while maintaining a sub-ns pulse width and the ability to optimize laser performance at higher repetition rates. They also boast high peak output powers, with relatively low energy and heat generation, as well as myriad of customization possibilities and options to tweak and enhance yo… Read More

At RPMC, we are excited to announce the release of our newest white paper titled “Laser Requirements for Time Gated Active Night Vision Imaging Systems.”  In this paper, we review the fundamentals of modern night vision camera technology. We then go on to discuss the differences between active and passive imaging systems.  Finally, we will explore the advantages and disadvantages of using laser-based, active imaging systems and illuminating why, in some instances, lasers are the preferred illumination source, despite their inherent … Read More

Over the past year, we here at RPMC Lasers have published several different pieces of technical content on various LIDAR applications.  Some of our more recent posts include a white paper titled “Single Frequency Fiber Lasers for Doppler LIDAR,” and a blog post on the use of aerial LIDAR in bathymetry.  LIDAR is quickly becoming one of the most rapidly growing sectors of the overall laser market.  In fact, Market Insider recently reported that “ The market for LIDAR is expected to grow double in size in the next five… Read More

Bathymetry is the study of the underwater depth in oceans, lakes, or seas and is used to generate detailed topographical maps of bodies of water around the world.  While there are several different methods of underwater mapping including sonar, in recent years LIDAR-based bathymetry techniques has become more and more popular.   One of the primary advantages of LIDAR is that it can be performed by a laser mounted on aircraft or drones, enabling aerial surveillance of shallow waters and coastal regions where larger watercraft are not able… Read More

Last year we published a blog post on the subject of combining active imaging and night vision by using time-of-flight (TOF) gated lidar to produce three-dimensional images of a target without the need for visible light.  We will revisit this topic, but instead, focus our attention on the importance of the laser specifications itself as opposed to the underlying principles of the me… Read More

Last fall, we published a blog titled “Micromachining Lasers for Anti-Counterfeiting,” where we explored how laser micromachining can be used to embed microscopic two-dimensional identification codes directly onto the item of interest.   In addition to discussing the fundamentals of micromachining in that blog, we highlighted the MicroMake system from Bright Solutions, including how its short pulse width and high pulse repetition rate facilitate ablation to produce ultra-high-resolution machining… Read More

Microchip lasers have been around since 1989 when they were first produced at MIT’s Lincoln Labs, but it wasn’t until recently that they have become commonplace in the commercial laser market.  As such, they are still somewhat misunderstood. In this blog, we are going to take some time and explain their functionality and why they are so uniquely suited as compact pulsed laser sources at a wide variety of laser wa… Read More

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is one of the most popular laser based atomic spectroscopy techniques on the market today.  Nowadays, LIBS is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for elemental analysis and is generally viewed as a complementary technique to other elemental methods such as mass spectrometry.  LIBS has been deployed in a wide range of industrial and scientific applications including on the surface of Mars, where over 200,000 LIBS spectra have been collected aboard of the Mars Science Laboratory Rover … Read More

Flashlamp pumped pulsed Er:YAG lasers have been widely utilized in dermatology and dentistry as an alternative to CO2 lasers, but historically continuous wave (CW) and quasi-continuous wave (QCW) Er:YAG lasers were problematic due to their unique energy level decay times.   Our friends over at Sheaumann Laser have worked hard over the years to figure out a methodology for overcoming these issues and have since developed a diode-pumped 2.94 micron Er:YAG lasers known as the MirPac series, with a maximum output power of … Read More

RPMC is excited to announce our most recent white paper titled “Single Frequency Fiber Lasers for Doppler Lidar.” Doppler lidar takes advantage of the fact that when light interacts with moving object, it experiences a frequency shift. This frequency shift allows you to measure the veloci… Read More

Mass spectrometry is an extremely powerful analytical tool for chemical analysis, which is widely utilized in applications ranging from forensics to pharmaceuticals, because of its ability to detect the atomic constituents of an analyte but also determine their relative concentrations.  This process is facilitated by ionizing the sample and then passing it through both an electric and a magnetic field causing them to spread out based upon their at… Read More

Bright Solutions’ sub-ns DPSS lasers are field proven subsystems for portable lidar sensors. Many successful installations worldwide have confirmed the reliability of these laser sources in land vehicles, as well as airplanes and helicopters. Maintaining the concept of a ruggedized all-in-one IP 67 package, Bright Solutions has now developed several higher power versions, featuring over 100W of average power at 1064 nm, with pulse durations in the range of 300 to 900 ps, and a repetition rate up to … Read More

After several years of in-house testing and intensive testing in the field for some pilot programs, Bright Solutions is happy to announce their new UV versions of the Wedge Lasers, the industrial sub-ns DPSS laser solution. The Wedge HF and XF offer a pulse width less than 450ps, peak power up to 80 kW, are configurable in several frequency ranges from Single Shot to 200 kHz, and include the low jitt… Read More

Bright Microlaser’s activity is focused on continuous development, pursuing higher reliability, simplified usability, maintenance and service for its devices. This opens up more and more opportunities in new markets and emerging applications, making Bright Microlaser a leading man… Read More

Laser-based techniques have been gaining more and more popularity in the medical and biomedical fields.  In previous posts, we have discussed a wide variety of such applications ranging from Laser Diode Crown Troughing in Dentistry to Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) in Biomedical Applications, and in this blog post, we are going to take a look at another up and coming technique called Photoacoustic … Read More

Optical technologies are widely used in anti-counterfeiting. One of the newer methods combines laser marking & micromachining to embed microscopic 2D barcodes directly onto the item. This blog post explores the types of lasers used, & the system level requirements for high-resolution 2D… Read More

During any manufacturing process, there is some statistical variation in the finished product.  Resistor manufacturing is no different, and for many years traditional bulk and chip resistors have been tested and sorted into bins and labeled based upon these tolerances.  Board mount chip resistors are also similarly tolerance using a numerical code instead of a color code, but the end result is the same.  However, this is not feasible in larger format thick-film or thin-film intergraded circuits which require initial calibration, such as operational amplifiers, voltage dividers, and oscillators, where the resistors are one small detail in a much more complex arc… Read More

Modern lasers come in a seemingly endless variety ranging from diode lasers as small as a grain of rice to CO2 lasers the size of a refrigerator. The one thing that all of these lasers have in common is that they contain the three basic components of a laser: gain medium, resonator, and excitation source. If any of these three components are missing, achieving threshold and starting the lasing process would be impossible. In this blog post, we will examine what happens when the resonator is removed from this equation, resulting in an optical amplifi… Read More

By combining TOF lidar at 1.5 micros with an InGaAs camera, you can produce a hypercube or “point cloud” containing a three-dimensional image of the target. This technique known as active night vision laser imaging, is discussed in this post, as well as which laser is best for this ap… Read More

Passively q-switched microchip lasers from Bright Microlaser, are the ideal solution for time-of-flight (TOF) lidar systems, because they offer pulse widths as short as 400ps while still maintain a single longitudinal mode and TEM00 output in wavelengths from 1064 nm to as low … Read More