A small list of notes on lasers work, essentially (was done as part of my research at UNC during high school). Here's the full paper and here's a reference paper we used.

read more

Absorption is the taking in of EM energy by an atom (typically the electrons of that atom), the energy is usually then transformed into another form of energy such as heat.

Because black materials absorb all incoming wavelengths of light, they transform all of this EM energy into heat which is why they become the most hot in the sun.

ATTENUATION: the absorption of light during its propagation.

Saturable absorption is a property of a material where the absorption of light decreases and the intensity of the incident light increases.