1 / 8

Undergraduate Laser Laboratory at SJSU

Undergraduate Laser Laboratory at SJSU. Ken Wharton. SJSU Physics Department . 4 of 14 full-time faculty members with laser/optics research background Houses “Institute for Modern Optics” (contact rdbahuguna@aim.com for more info) Located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

grady
Download Presentation

Undergraduate Laser Laboratory at SJSU

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Undergraduate Laser Laboratory at SJSU Ken Wharton

  2. SJSU Physics Department • 4 of 14 full-time faculty members with laser/optics research background • Houses “Institute for Modern Optics” (contact rdbahuguna@aim.com for more info) • Located in the heart of Silicon Valley Instead of a typical “Advanced Laboratory”, our department instead offers an optics laboratory and a laser laboratory for our upper-division majors.

  3. Laser Laboratory: Overview • 4 optical tables; 8 students/section • 4 hours/week (2 units) • No write-up time in class The first few labs are identical for all students. Then the students rotate through two sets of four labs.

  4. Introductory “Experiments” • Labs 1 & 2 (same for all students): • Laser and Electrical Safety • Mounts/hardware (built from scratch each week) • Optics handling/cleaning • Beam pointing + centering (HeNe laser) • Power measurements (HeNe laser) • ND Filters/Attenuation (Only actual experiment) • Scientific Writing Techniques Need 4 sets of everything in these labs. (Optical Tables, ND Filters, power meters, HeNe lasers, mirrors, hardware...)

  5. Primary Experiments • Align HeNe cavity; current vs. power (*) • Polarization Lab (/2, /4 plates, Pockels cell) • CCD Lab, Gaussian Beam Propagation • Photodetector response time (chopped HeNe) • He-Ne Beam Amplification / Saturation Intensity (*) • CO2 laser (homemade system) (*) • Argon-Ion laser (multi-line, diffraction grating expt.) • Interferometry (index of refraction of air) Donated equipment includes CCD camera, optical tables, power supplies, HeNes, Optics, Hardware...

  6. HeNe Discharge Tube 1st experiment: Use reference HeNe to align mirrors, optimize power output, plot discharge current vs. power. 2nd experiment: Increasing input power lowers gain (from ~15% to ~5%) allowing estimation of saturation intensity for HeNe.

  7. CO2 Laser Experiment • One mirror fixed; one mirror adjustable (students align with reference HeNe) • Maximum power ~ 500mW • Students try different output couplers • Beam size estimated from burn spot on paper • Students compute gain coefficient, efficiency

  8. Final Thoughts • Lab complements laser course • Usual reasons: Hands-on learning, etc... • The real world vs. 1st-order laser theory e.g. Gaussian Beam Lab, introduce M2≠1 • Lab experience key for jobs in photonics • If interested in more info, please contact me: • Ken Wharton, wharton@science.sjsu.edu Thanks: Sarma Lakkaraju, Kiumars Parvin, Ramen Bahuguna, Jose Garcia

More Related