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Documents How Laser Diodes Work -- The Learning Circuit 83
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  • Author Author: tariq.ahmad
  • Date Created: 15 Dec 2020 6:50 PM Date Created
  • Last Updated Last Updated: 9 Sep 2020 7:24 AM
  • Views 3410 views
  • Likes 5 likes
  • Comments 10 comments
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How Laser Diodes Work -- The Learning Circuit 83

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How Laser Diodes Work

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In this The Learning Circuit lesson, Karen teaches about laser diodes. She begins by explaining how a standard PN diode works. However, laser diodes are PIN diodes. Understanding the I, which stands for “intrinsic” layer, is important to understanding what makes laser diodes different, and how they are able to produce such a small, focused beam. Since laser diodes can be dangerous, Karen reviews laser safety, then wraps up the video by showing off some of the many uses for laser diodes. Keep your eyes peeled for the next video from The Learning Circuit where Karen shows how to use a laser diode to make a trip wire alarm!

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Top Comments

  • colporteur
    colporteur over 4 years ago +1
    Great material. Puttied in a few gaps in my diode knowledge wall.
  • neilk
    neilk over 4 years ago +1
    Thank you, Karen. I learned a lot! Neil
  • DAB
    DAB over 4 years ago in reply to makerkaren +1
    Hi Karen, My theory on photons has developed over the last fifty years of working with lasers, optics, physics, electronics, chemistry, biology, etc. In out books we show how existing measurements and…
  • DAB
    DAB over 4 years ago in reply to Jan Cumps

    Most of the comments I get from "mainstream" physicists have been very dogmatic.

    They refuse to entertain the idea that their assumptions could be wrong.

     

    On the other hand, several engineering Phds have called the theory as plausable as we address the assumptions and identify that they could be wrong.

     

    So we keep analyzing the data and revising the theory.

    If I had more mobility I would try to set up some definitive experiments, but at this time, it is not possible.

     

    I need a lab with a lot of open minded people and of course funding.

     

    DAB

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  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 4 years ago in reply to DAB

    There's definitely conservatism. In science, engineering, any other area.

    But we're in the age of internet, where non-dogmatic scientists have a voice too.

    Things are challenged these days.

    If no one challenged your theory by now, it may mean that neither dogmatists or challengers see value?

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  • DAB
    DAB over 4 years ago in reply to Jan Cumps

    You have to understand how the physics Mafia works.

    All of Quantum Theory is built upon a set of Assumptions.

    If you violate any one of those assumptions, then you throw the entire QT into question. That is verboten and career death.

     

    As an engineer, I do not hold any of those assumptions as sacred. I just want physics that I can use to build the next generation of useful things. The current QT does not allow me to do that.

    However, as I point out in my next book, if you toss those assumptions out and use my suggestions, you reduce QT into a useful form of physics that can explain everything in the universe with one set of math that works at all levels, which is precisely what Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life trying to do. The difference between his work and mine is that he was afraid to violate any of the fundamental assumptions. I realized they were bad assumptions and replaced them with slightly different interpretations and everything falls into a very simplistic universe that would form and work naturally.

     

    Is that not what you would expect?

     

    DAB

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  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 4 years ago in reply to DAB

    But why doesn't a scientist touch the theory in 50 years?

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  • DAB
    DAB over 4 years ago in reply to makerkaren

    Hi Karen,

     

    My theory on photons has developed over the last fifty years of working with lasers, optics, physics, electronics, chemistry, biology, etc.

    In out books we show how existing measurements and physics experiments already prove the theory.

    The easiest experiment is just drawing an arc with any electrical outlet. When it arcs, you SEE photons emitted. If you use an ammeter you SEE electric current flow when you SEE the arc.

    So if it was just electrons, you would SEE nothing. When you delve into subatomic physics they talk about photons, but are still in the 120 year old view that they are massless.

    However, when you go through the details of Einstein's photoelectric effect, it is obvious to anyone with an open mind that what you really have is photon flow, not electron flow. You just cannot do any calculations that can prove that a single massless photon can cause an electron to move from atom to atom. The only logical conclusion you can make is that it is the photon that generates the charge flow that we can then measure as current.

     

    We go through the explanations and the math in the books. Our next book has extensive mathematical proofs that show what happens to the photon when it approaches an atom. We demonstrate through our model that only a photon with mass and charge can slow to a stop to transfer its energy to the atom. By using our captured photon shell model instead of the electron orbit or electron cloud model, we show how you accomplish every mass/charge exchange already measured in all aspects of physics, chemistry an biology.

     

    We also discuss the findings of most of the Nobel laureates over the last 120 years and discuss how each of their "revelations" were biased to their fixation on old ideas about everything from the massless photon, how the universe began, how stars really work and what is really inside an atom. As I point out, I am an out of the box type of thinker. All of those points are flawed, unproven and unsupported by modern observations and measurements. The revelation of dark matter is a major case in point. Our theory shows that dark matter is a natural part of star object manufacture, we describe what they are made of and provide the basis for how to find and measure them. The current star model is clueless about how dark matter would be formed, which is why they have no idea of what it is and how to detect it.

     

    So the quick answer is that my views will be eventually proven, it will just take a brave scientist to see what I have seen and prove it to the community at large. That scientist will get my Nobel eventually.

     

    DAB

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  • makerkaren
    makerkaren over 4 years ago in reply to DAB

    That’s an interesting theory about photons.
    Someone over in the YouTube comments said “photons don’t exist” and I just had to roll my eyes.
    Do you think there’s a way to prove your photon theory? As a child of the 90s all I can think is that I wish I could hop on the Magic School Bus and shrink down to the size of a photon to find out. I wonder if it at that scale the photons and electrons would even be visible.  Hmmm. Does this qualify as theoretical physics? Haha

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  • neilk
    neilk over 4 years ago

    Thank you, Karen. I learned a lot!

     

    Neil

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  • ralphjy
    ralphjy over 4 years ago

    Nice presentation.  I had a friend that worked with VCSEL designs about 15 years ago.  I've been using quite a few infrared VCSELs lately with the integrated microLIDAR ToF sensors.

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  • colporteur
    colporteur over 4 years ago

    Great material. Puttied in a few gaps in my diode knowledge wall.

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  • DAB
    DAB over 4 years ago

    Good episode.

     

    I began working with LASERs back in 1973 when they were very expensive. We used them in a laboratory looking at optical effects. I was using one of the very first analog to digital image detectors, so I was doing digital image processing long before it became common.

    I worked with both gas and solid laser devices.

    When the first semiconductor lasers came out, I had a chance to begin testing them. They were very sensitive and very low power.

     

    Now for the Heretical Physics part. WARNING, this discussion does not conform to accepted physics.

    The Laser diode was one of the devices that led me to my theory that all current flow is actually photon flow. The existing discussions of how photons "magically" appear out of the electron cloud has never been proven. My view is that instead of electrons, every atom is surrounded by a thin shell of captured photons. This approach to atoms helps to better explain how a laser diode can continue to generate specific photons until the material is destroyed. The same approach works for any other laser type as well. In my next book, we provide a detailed explanation of how this idea of photon flow satisfies Maxwell's equations as well look at how a photon is absorbed or reflected off an atom.

     

    The doping atoms within the semiconductor material creates areas of photon surplus or photon deficit to create the P and N material. The Intrinsic zone has a very specific density of active atoms, which are the source of the specific frequency of the photons generated by the diode when current flows. Our research has shown that you get the very narrow beam of photons due to the orientation of the atoms in the crystal matrix. Only the narrow path of the intrinsic zone supports the emission of photons by the diode. The specific direction of the output is very small so the photons exit the diode along a very small angular divergence. The lens in the diode creates a collimated flow of photons, which hold their convergence over large distances, but as you let the beam continue, it will eventually diverge to the point where you can no longer have enough photons to be visible.

     

    We also resolve the wave and particle duality of light. Our photon model is composed of two mass objects that rotate and vibrate, which is how a photon can go from one end of the universe to the other without changing amplitude or losing frequency coherence.

    The problem with the wave theory is that all waves dissipate over distance. Always!

    A single particle cannot vibrate, so the only way a photon can work is if it has two particles that can mutually sustain vibration.

     

    DAB

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