Raman laser

The Raman laser is a byproduct of Raman scattering, discovered in 1928 by Nobel laureate Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman. It works as follows: light hits a substance, causing the atoms in the substance to vibrate sympathetically. The collision of photons with the substance causes some of the photons to gain or lose energy, resulting in a secondary light of a different wavelength. A Raman laser essentially involves taking this secondary light and then amplifying it by reflecting it and pumping energy into the system to emit a coherent laser beam.