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arXiv · 2104.07063

Light and thermodynamics: the three-level laser as an endoreversible heat engine

Peter Muys
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Abstract

In the past, a number of heat engine models have been devised to apply the principles of thermodynamics to a laser. The best one known is the model using a negative temperature to describe population inversion. In this paper, we present a new temperature scale not based on reservoir temperatures. This is realized by revealing a formal mathematical similarity between the expressions for the optimum power generated by an endoreversible heat engine and the optimum output-coupled power from a three-level laser resonator. As a consequence, the theory of endoreversibility can be applied to enable a new efficiency analysis of the cooling of high-power lasers. We extend the endoreversibility concept also to the four-level laser model.

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Peter Muys. 2021-04-13. Light and thermodynamics: the three-level laser as an endoreversible heat engine. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.07063

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