I understand that laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. However, I don’t understand how radiation comes into play when trying to create a light source with no divergence.
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Light *is* radiation. All electromagnetic radiation is fundamentally the same thing – a wave of energy. That wave will have a specific wavelength, and the size of the wavelength determines what type of radiation it is.
Longer wavelength radiation gives us things like FM radio, or wi-fi.
Shorter wavelength radiation gives us X-Rays and other high-energy radiation.
In the middle is where you find visible light, from red to violet.
So the ‘radiation’ in LASER is just talking about the light that it produces. A plain old lightbulb also makes radiation, just not coherently.
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