multi colored laser?

yeah uhh this is my first post and i havent read anything for like a year so i might be behind the times but i have a question. What if you had white light go through a prism and collomate(sp?) the outcoming beam? You would have a dial and it would rotate it so you could shinne all the colors of the rainbow. i know that would be inefecient but that would be cool...

oh yeah and also how hard would it be to make a hand held cascading greenie?

Yes, you can buy a white laser and select any color you want, or spead the beam into a rainbow... for about fifty grand.

http://www.fianium.com/products/optical.htm

I don't understand what you mean by a "cascading" greenie.

Here's a laser that emits up to 8 wavelenghts at one time
http://www.koheras.com/Menu/Products/Super+Continuum/SuperK+Extreme+#2

comozo said:

Here's a laser that emits up to 8 wavelenghts at one time
http://www.koheras.com/Menu/Products/Super+Continuum/SuperK+Extreme+%232

Click to expand...

WOW that is simply amazing! I didn't even know the technology existed to produce a white laser!!!! Simply amazing. Anyone know where I can get 50 grand????? lol

hellokitty[hk] said:

yeah uhh this is my first post and i havent read anything for like a year so i might be behind the times but i have a question. What if you had white light go through a prism and collomate(sp?) the outcoming beam?

Click to expand...

Just because a light is well collimated does not make it a laser. A laser is inherently monochromatic, and outputs a beam that is coherent -- meaning the light waves output all have the same phase-difference relative to each other.

Multiple component lasers, such as red green and blue could be combined using a prism/optics, but there's no such thing as a broad-spectrum white laser, but with RGB components )primary colors) it's possible to generate any aparrent color.

What about the krypton (may be wrong about which gas) white light lasers? They produce a white beam. I think they produce multiple lines of light that all get combined and you use a PCAOM to get the single colors out of it... I may have the process totally wrong but there are white gas lasers.

oh yes Whitelight lasers do exist I have S-P 168 4 watt mixed gas (Argon-Krypton)
laser that produces the RGB, than it couples to a PCAOM that seperates/mixes the colors

argon and even YAG ( like pointers ) have multiple power lines depending on their harmonics. Most argon lasers are "multiline" they have a mirror and a prism or some other kind of optic that changes the harmonics of the beam, from 457nm ( deep blue ) to 457 514 ( light green ).

My big yag laser is 1064nm, the first harmonic is 532nm, then the 3rd is 355. the fourth is 266 and the sixth is 213.

1064 -2x-> 1064 & 532. you use a mirror to reflect off the excess 1064 or an IR filter to absorb it and you get pure 532.

1064-3x-> 1064 & 532 & 355. you filter off the unwanted 1064 and 532 and you get pure 355. or you do it all at once and just "tune" to what you want.

just keep in mind that every harmonic looses some power, and some are weaker than others.

What about the krypton (may be wrong about which gas) white light lasers? They produce a white beam. I think they produce multiple lines of light that all get combined and you use a PCAOM to get the single colors out of it... I may have the process totally wrong but there are white gas lasers.

Click to expand...

I was saying that there were no broad-spectrum white lasers, broad spectrum meaning like incandescent/fluorescent, as opposed to discrete lines. From the description it was sounding like the orignal poster just wanted to collimate a typical white light source (say, a phosphor LED) using optics. You guys are right though that lasers with mutliple component "lines" do exist.

yeah after reading that and checking the OP, the whole idea behind a laser is uniform wavelength and coherence. any full spectrum light source is NOT coherent. you might be able to isolate out 1 wavelength but you will never ever make it coherent.

laser light = ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

normal light = ))(((((()))((())()(()()))(((()))((()()()(()))(()()

ok im back and thanks...

Yes, you can buy a white laser and select any color you want, or spead the beam into a rainbow... for about fifty grand.

http://www.fianium.com/products/optical.htm

I don't understand what you mean by a "cascading" greenie.

Click to expand...

50 grand well i don't think il be doing that.

As for cascading um i might have sort of forgot but i think it is when you send a main laser through a some fiber optic cable and along the way you pump up the laser with other lasers that are dumping light into the cable. its sort of for high powerd lasers. i know they use them for nuclear test and thats too much power for me but cascading does increase the efficiency by alot.

Here are a couple of threads at PL that talk about "White light diodes" and such...

here and here... I like the box in first post, second link...

all right well it seems a bit expesive to do the white laser and prism thing might as well just put a bunch of laseres in one. So anyone had any experience with cascading lasers?

NO WAY!! that should make cascading green lasers alot easier ok well ill stop double posting