After successful completion of the course, students are able to orient themselves in the growing field of industrial and research-oriented solid-state lasers, understand their future prospects and principal limitations, and have an overview of their current and evolving applications.

Even those future electrical engineers, who will not work at the company which produce lasers, will likely be confronted with the use of lasers in the manufacturing or incorporation of lasers in the end product. They should be able to critically evaluate the project, suggest the correct laser technology and suppllier, analyse the offers and control the ordering procedure, present and professionally discuss the chosen solutions with colleagues and customers.  

Solid-state lasers are broadly used nowadays in telecommunications, industry, medicine and science. Long-distance communication or modern car plants are now unthinkable without solid-state lasers. They operate in many important spectral regions and offer stability, efficiency and compactness. Most importantly, they provide the highest power, best beam quality, the broadest tuning range, the highest pulse energy, and the shortest pulses, which are generally inaccessible for other types of lasers. Some most recent advances like femtochemistry or attophysics have only become possible owing to the solid-state lasers. The lecture course starts with the introduction of principles of laser action as well as the optical and electronic properties of laser materials, using mainly the semi-classical approach. After a brief review of design principles and operation regimes, the connection between the material parameters and laser properties is explained in detail. We consider all modern solid-state lasers, starting from broadband lasers suitable for ultrashortpulse generation till fixed-wavelength high-power kW-class lasers, especially fiber lasers. Finally we make a market overview and discuss some applications of lasers and advanced laser technologies in industry and science.

The main part of the course is the block lecture. The lecture notes and the corresponding book chapters will be made available. Three to four home assignments have the purpose to teach the main principles and methods.

Lecture notes and necessary literature will be made available to all registered participants.

The lecture is given as block, i.e. we make a compact series of 2-hour lectures. Normally, we are done within 2 months, counting the holidays, etc.
We plan two lectures per week - The exact schedule will be elaborated at the first meeting ("Vorbesprechung") !!!

The final result will include home assignments and the Examination note. The oral examination (use of the lecture notes, books, and Internet is allowed and even desirable!) has a form a Colloquium where a student shoud suggest a laser type for a certain purpose, analyse it, and defend the choice in front of the colleagues.

Lecture notes for this course are available.

Electrical Engineering students should first take "Photonik 1" or equivalent. Physics students are expected to have knowledge of optics and atomic physics.