laser eye surgery uses

How are the properties of laser light used in laser eye surgery?

The most important property of laser light is that it can be precisely collimated into a parallel beam. What this enables is focusing of the beam at an extremely precise location in space, with subsequent divergence of the beam past the focal point. I calaser eye surgerying about the relevance of this to laser eye surgery. Well, you see, if you can focus a high-intensity beam to a point in space, it will burn (or cut) at precisely that location, but not harm adjacent tissue since the energy of the beam is dispersed over a larger area than at the focal point. This allows the eye surgeon to precisely ablate the lens to correct astigmatisms and so forth.

Comment: Biofreak needs to read how lasers for eye surgery work (it’s not by heating the tissue):

http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-Do-Lasers-Work-in-Surgery-69398.lasik
lasektp://www.operationauge.com/excimer-laser-lasik-lasek-prk.html

(Note that focal point is key since it is only at the focal point where the cavitation pulse (i.e., micro-explosions in the first reference above) is generated. Pulse operation (which translates to high peak power) is important, but focal point is critical.)