Secondary laser

Lasers can be pulsed (where laser output occurs suddenly in a short pulse, followed by a long interval to restore the population inversion by pumping) or continuous-wave (CW where the output is almost continuous, because the next population inversion occurs very soon). Secondary lasers, such as dye lasers, must use a primary (usually pulsed) laser as the excitation source. When all modes are allowed in the optical cavity, the laser is said to be in multimode operation. 

A variety of other pulsed laser light sources have been incorporated into optical emission spectrometer systems. The two most common ones are based on either a pulsed nitrogen laser or a frequency-upconverted pulsed Nd YAG laser as either a single line source (337 nm for the nitrogen laser, 266,355, or 532 nm for the Nd YAG laser) or used as a pump laser for a tunable secondary laser device such as a dye laser or an optical parametric oscillator (OPO). The ultimate wavelength tunabUity in such systems depends on the characteristics of the secondary laser and can be substantial in the case of the OPO, but at a substantial price in both cost and complexity of operation and maintenance. Nonetheless, these sources can have excellent temporal characteristics (sub-nanosecond pulse durations) and high per pulse energies. 

Much of the energy deposited in a sample by a laser pulse or beam ablates as neutral material and not ions. Ordinarily, the neutral substances are simply pumped away, and the ions are analyzed by the mass spectrometer. To increase the number of ions formed, there is often a second ion source to produce ions from the neutral materials, thereby enhancing the total ion yield. This secondary or additional mode of ionization can be effected by electrons (electron ionization, El), reagent gases (chemical ionization. Cl), a plasma torch, or even a second laser pulse. The additional ionization is often organized as a pulse (electrons, reagent gas, or laser) that follows very shortly after the... 

Modern commercial lasers can produce intense beams of monochromatic, coherent radiation. The whole of the UV/visible/IR spectral range is accessible by suitable choice of laser. In mass spectrometry, this light can be used to cause ablation, direct ionization, and indirect ionization (MALDI). Ablation (often together with a secondary ionization mode) and MALDI are particularly important for examining complex, intractable solids and large polar biomolecules, respectively. 

Lasers are used to deliver a focused, high density of monochromatic radiation to a sample target, which is vaporized and ionized. The ions are detected in the usual way by any suitable mass spectrometer to produce a mass spectrum. The yield of ions is often increased by using a secondary ion source or a matrix. 

The ablated vapors constitute an aerosol that can be examined using a secondary ionization source. Thus, passing the aerosol into a plasma torch provides an excellent means of ionization, and by such methods isotope patterns or ratios are readily measurable from otherwise intractable materials such as bone or ceramics. If the sample examined is dissolved as a solid solution in a matrix, the rapid expansion of the matrix, often an organic acid, covolatilizes the entrained sample. Proton transfer from the matrix occurs to give protonated molecular ions of the sample. Normally thermally unstable, polar biomolecules such as proteins give good yields of protonated ions. This is the basis of matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI). 

The three techniques — laser desorption ionization, laser ablation with secondary ionization, and matrix-assisted laser desorption — are all used for mass spectrometry of a wide variety of substances from rock, ceramics, and bone to proteins, peptides, and oligonucleotides. 

Future Trends. Methods of laser cooling and trapping are emerging as of the mid-1990s that have potential new analytical uses. Many of the analytical laser spectroscopies discussed herein were first employed for precise physical measurements in basic research. AppHcations to analytical chemistry occurred as secondary developments from 10 to 15 years later. 

In other articles in this section, a method of analysis is described called Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS), in which material is sputtered from a surface using an ion beam and the minor components that are ejected as positive or negative ions are analyzed by a mass spectrometer. Over the past few years, methods that post-ion-ize the major neutral components ejected from surfaces under ion-beam or laser bombardment have been introduced because of the improved quantitative aspects obtainable by analyzing the major ejected channel. These techniques include SALI, Sputter-Initiated Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (SIRIS), and Sputtered Neutral Mass Spectrometry (SNMS) or electron-gas post-ionization. Post-ionization techniques for surface analysis have received widespread interest because of their increased sensitivity, compared to more traditional surface analysis techniques, such as X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), and their more reliable quantitation, compared to SIMS. 

Surface Analysis by Laser Ionization Post-Ionization Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Multi-Photon Nonresonant Post Ionization Multiphoton Resonant Post Ionization Resonant Post Ionization Multi-Photon Ionization Single-Photon Ionization... 

N on reso nan laser-post- on izatio n ol secondary neuira-s NR-Laser-St IMS... 

The intrinsic drawback of LIBS is a short duration (less than a few hundreds microseconds) and strongly non-stationary conditions of a laser plume. Much higher sensitivity has been realized by transport of the ablated material into secondary atomic reservoirs such as a microwave-induced plasma (MIP) or an inductively coupled plasma (ICP). Owing to the much longer residence time of ablated atoms and ions in a stationary MIP (typically several ms compared with at most a hundred microseconds in a laser plume) and because of additional excitation of the radiating upper levels in the low pressure plasma, the line intensities of atoms and ions are greatly enhanced. Because of these factors the DLs of LA-MIP have been improved by one to two orders of magnitude compared with LIBS. 

Different lasers use different materials as the active medium. The medium can be either solid, liquid, or gas, and there are advantages for each in the amount of energy that can be stored, ease of handling and storage, secondary safety hazards, cooling properties, and physical characteristics of the laser output. 

LGSs on ELTs also present severe challenges. The first problem is the perspective elongation which is a small problem on 8-10 m telescopes where the elongation is 0.73 arcseconds (laser launched from behind secondary mir-... 

Figure 1. Schematic of a laser guide adaptive optics system. The laser is pr( jected along or parallel to the telescope ax onto the science object. The deformable mirror can be a separate entity, or can be an adaptive secondary. The light is split among the cameras by dichroics.

Gemini North Observatory/CTI Mode-locked SFG Laser. CTT is developing the first commercial solid-state Na LGS system. It will be installed on the center section of the 8-m Gemini North telescope, with the output beam relayed to a projector behind the secondary mirror. The projected beam is required to be 10-20 W power, with M2 < 1.5. The architecture is based on sum-frequency mixing two mode-locked solid-state Nd YAG lasers. The mode-locked format provides significantly higher peak intensity than CW, enabling more efficient SFG conversion. The laser is also free of the thermal and intensity transients that are inherent in the macro pulse format. The chosen... 

The brief history, operation principle, and applications of the above-mentioned techniques are described in this chapter. There are several other measuring techniques, such as the fluorometry technique. Scanning Acoustic Microscopy, Laser Doppler Vibrometer, and Time-of-flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy, which are successfully applied in micro/nanotribology, are introduced in this chapter, too. 

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