I set forth to learn the mystery of lasers just like Conan venturing out in the world discovering the riddle of steel. Instead of a thief by my side, my tour guide was Charles Hubert, a Senior Staff Engineer at CVI Melles Griot. He swiped me in the building and I entered an industrial-looking, open space with fluorescent yellow lights hanging overhead. It was a cross between the hallways of my elementary school and my grandfather’s garage. The linoleum floors were polished to a shine and the walls were lined with various charts that looked like they tracked productivity or sales. It was three in the afternoon which is considered after hours so I only saw a handful of employees on my tour. In close proximity of lasers you had to wear safety glasses and Charlie handed me a pair and told me not to look directly at the lasers lest they bore holes through my eyes.
As we passed tubes of pink neon, Charlie explained that laser is an acronym which stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. To put simply, light goes through a tube of neon gases which bounces around, gains energy and comes out at the end as a laser.
We bumped into his one of his colleagues wearing fancy-looking safety glasses who showed me their blue helium cadmium lasers. I asked what those lasers in particular did and he said that they created 3D representations of things before they are made out of metal. I thought the laser melted the plastic but it actually has the opposite effect, it turns liquid plastic into solid plastic. He explained that green lasers are used for eye surgery. Yellow lasers are used for chemistry. Red lasers are used for scientific applications like DNA sequencing or blood analysis and even lumber cutting. Their lasers are also used in concerts, television shows and sporting events.
In order to see how they actually make a laser, I had to wear a head bouffant, a surgical mask, latex gloves, shoe coverings and a smock that looked like my great aunt’s pajamas. Charlie laughed and said I looked like a lunch lady. Once we were ridiculously dressed, he led me in the DPSS work station which stands for diode pumped solid state lasers. The room was really loud since they pump filtered air since they are more OCD than the Nicastro brothers. He explained that their lasers can’t have any type of microscopic contamination or else it can change and block the action of the laser. We met another colleague named Mark who looked even more ridiculous than I did since he had to wear a beard covering instead of a surgical mask. He pointed to a laser work station that had a black square box the size of a small car battery with a tiny blue light inside. Midgets and children must work there since the size of their instruments are so small and the optics and crystals are even smaller. I asked Mark if there have been any laser injuries and he said that you can have minor degree burns on your hands and that papers have had holes burned through them.
I took a deep breath and asked them my last question. When I die and Crom asks me, what is the riddle of lasers, what shall I tell him? They looked at each other and said, tell him the riddle is stimulated emission converting energy into a monochromatic beam of photons. A smile crept on my lips. Thank you, I whispered, knowing that I shall live forever in Valhalla.
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