Virtual laboratories in optics: applications to a course on lasers

Abstract

Virtual laboratories are used to help teaching a course on lasers. The spectral emission of a laser, the Zeeman effect on the laser frequencies, the frequency stabilisation of a laser and the Lamb dip are the subjects chosen to virtually illustrate the properties of a laser. All the laboratories are very close to reality, including possible experimental missteps. The student is under the conditions he can find in the real laboratory and can spend as long as he wishes, at any time. The teacher can track the student via a data base that includes the eventual missteps which the student would have committed. KeywordsVirtual laboratories ; simulation of a laser ; close to the reality ; simulated experimental missteps ; student tracking. SummaryThe École Polytechnique de Montréal being an engineering school, the laboratories take a n i mp o r t a n t p a r t i n e n g i n e e r ' s t r a i n i n g a n d p a r t i c u l a r l y u n d e r s t a n d i n g a l l t h e p h e n o me n a involved in the operation of a laser is made easier by the use of laboratories. However a good laboratory, modern and complete, is expensive. Moreover, in the case of a laboratory concerning lasers, it is important that the student has, at the time of making the laboratory, all the piece of information and the understanding necessary for a good learning. It follows from this that we frequently do not have a sufficient number of set-ups to satisfy at the students at the good time. One can easily imagine that the creation of virtual laboratories could solve this problem : they can be as numerous as there are computer stations, they can be carried out anywhere and at any moment, they may be amortized quickly, and, the last but not least, they are unbreakable. However, nothing can replace the reality of a true laboratory : giving the hands-on experience, facing experimental missteps, and so on. In developing virtual laboratories, we must thus try to simulate reality as much as possible. This is what we have done with the virtual laboratories used in the course "Introduction to lasers" of the École Polytechnique de Montréal. We have simulated real equipment which exists at the École Polytechnique, with all the actual conditions of operation. For all of them, the interface is as close as possible to reality : all appear as they really are, their operation and connections between them are simulated and many common experimental missteps are possible. The student experiments conditions of the real experiment, except for the fact that he cannot break the apparatus or operate it under extreme conditions. This paper is freely available as a resource for the optics and photonics education community.