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Cool It, Hot Rod: Improving Early Lasers
Merritt Birky measuring laser rod distortion at NIST in 1969.
In the first decade after the invention of the laser one challenge to improving laser quality was the distortion of a laser’s rod due to absorption of heat during lasing. The heat absorption distorted the rod’s optical characteristics, which reduced the quality of a laser’s beam. In 1969 NIST’s Merritt Birky developed a technique to measure the internal stresses on laser rods during lasing, leading to a better understanding of complex active laser characteristics and to improved laser rod construction.