Recent content by wglab

First, the medium must have optical gain at the wavelength(s) to be amplified. This usually involves one sort of trick or another, and ill not be found in a relatively high pressure gas mixture like that of a high intensity discharge lamp, which is in thermal equilibrium. The cavity mirrors...

Photons are elementary excitations of quantized modes of the electromagnetic field. If that didn't mean anything to you, you need to start with any modern physics book meant for the college introductory physics sequence.

If you are referring to the multiple low energy ionization limits, they are due to the excitation of one electron to threshold, along with vibrational and/or rotational excitation of the resulting ion core.