UPDATE APPLICATIONS OF LASER IN OTORHINOLARYNGOLGY

Abstract

It has been said that when the time in which we live

Jinally named, it will not be known-as the atomic or space-

•age hut the laser age. At present, we are still only at the dawning of this age the first lase was not produced until 1960, but smce then a large. number of lasers has been developed with• a vast rartge of scientific, industrial and • military uses. With these lasers astronomers have measured. the distance to the moon to an accuracy of centimeters, huge numbers of telephone calls can b transmitted by flexible glass fibers and physicists have probed plasmas hotter than the sun. These diverse uses ofthe laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) are all dependent on the basic characteristics of the laser beam: a11 intense beam of pure, monochromatic light which does not diverge and in which all the light waves are of the same length. Travel in the same direction and are in phase, rising and falling together. The beam can be focused to a fine point to produce very high energy levels. The concept of stimulated emission of radiation was initially proposed by Albert Einstein in 1916 (van der Waerden. 1967)_ Until that time, physicists believed that there could be only two interactions between matter and li1!ht, absorption and emission.