How Lasers Work - In theory

To make a laser, all you need to do is give a big collection of atoms enough energy so they're excited and ready to emit light. Once one of them spontaneously emits a photon, it'll stimulate some of the others to do so, and you get a nice cascade of illumination. But instead of letting all the light escape, it's more powerful to trap it between two mirrors and let it to bounce back and forth through the atoms. All that passing light will stimulate them to emit even more light, and as long as you keep on re-exciting the atoms, they're happy to go on emitting light forever. But why do the atoms emit light just because another photon passes by? It's actually pretty simple. Imagine flipping two coins: they can either be in the same state, or in different states. But photons aren't like coins - no matter how hard you try, you can't tell one apart from another. So in a "photon-flipping" experiment, that means there's only one way for them to be in different states, but two ways for them to be in the same state. So they're more likely to be in the same state, and in general, this implies that photons always want to be like other photons - to have the same phase, polarization, and go in the same direction. And what's more amazing is that if a solitary photon passes by an excited atom that could emit another photon, there's a good chance it will emit one. Because the two photons want be together - even BEFORE the second one exists. So once you have all these friendly photons bouncing around between the mirrors, you can just open up a little hole at the end and let out a blinding stream of coherent light: a laser beam. To see lasers in action, check out this sweet episode of "Smarter Every Day" showing a laser you can stick your hand inside! They also have a bunch of other cool science videos. To see lasers in action, check out this episode of showing a laser you can stick your hand inside! And if you like it, he also has a bunch of other cool science videos.