The Properties of Laser Light

The monochromaticity of laser light has many advantages in photochemistry. The absorbance of a sample at the laser wavelength is defined very accurately, so that Beer s law applies quite strictly even when the absorption spectrum of the sample is highly structured. 

Some lasers emit light of different wavelengths. The argon ion laser is an important example. Nevertheless the different lines are still highly monochromatic, even if the complete emission may appear to be white to the human eye. 

7 Self-phase Modulation White Light from Monochromatic Lasers 

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Fundamentally, the properties of laser light are concomitants of its coherence, which is in turn a consequence of the nature of stimulated emission. Most of these properties, especially brightness, monochromaticity, directionality, polarization, and coherence itself, are useful (for many applications, indis-pensible) in a spectroscopic light source. The spectroscopic potential of lasers was recognized even before they were invented. Actual applications remained very specialized until tunable lasers were devised. 

Probably the first suggestion for utilizing the properties of laser light (the high intensity and short duration of radiation pulses) was (Letokhov 1969) to use the vibrationally mediated photodissociation of molecules via an excited repulsive electronic state with noncoherent isotope-selective saturation of the vibrational transition (Fig. 11.2). The isotope-selective two-step photodissociation of molecules consists of pulsed isotope-selective excitation of a vibrational state in the molecules by IR laser radiation and subsequent pulsed photodissociation of the vibrationally excited molecules via an excited electronic state by a UV pulse (Fig. 11.2(a)) before the isotope selectivity of the excitation is lost in collisions. Selective two-step photodissociation of molecules is possible if their excitation is accompanied by a shift of their continuous-wave electronic photoabsorption band. In that case, the molecules of the desired isotopic composition, selectively excited by a laser pulse of frequency uji, can be photodissociated by a second laser pulse of frequency uj2 selected to fall within the region of the shift where the ratio between the absorption coefficients of the excited and unexcited molecules is a maximum (Fig. 11.2(b)). 

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