Laser‐induced chemical processes

Proposals for controlling or inducing chemical reactions with laser light have been around almost as long as lasers themselves. Immediately after Theodore Maiman's invention of the ruby laser in 1960 and Ali Javan, William Bennett and Donald Herriott's invention of the helium–neon gas laser in 1961 suggestions for using this new type of light source in chemical processes followed. The proposals resulted essentially from adapting already well‐known principles of photochemistry. Yet almost no research employing lasers in chemistry was done for ten years. Not until tunable lasers and high‐powered infrared lasers arrived at the end of the 1960's and in the early 1970's did laser chemistry become experimentally feasible, and the period since then has seen intense and systematic study of atomic and molecular processes. Of particular interest are those selective processes applicable to laser isotope separation, such as the work on carbon isotopes carried out in the apparatus shown in figure 1 and discussed later in this article. Selective processes also appear to be useful for the production of highly pure substances and for the study of certain photobiochemical compounds. In this article I will be able to give only a brief survey of the great amount of work currently in progress, concentrating particularly on those aspects being studied at laboratories in the Soviet Union.