Beam coupler?

Is there a way to couple two beams into one circular beam? I know there are beam splitters, but it seems like this technique could be reversed. Or am I wrong?

are you talking flashlights or lasers?

Lasers.

I don't know much about lasers but there could be a possibility if a prism is used to split the beams a similar design could combine two beams by reversing the direction of the light from two outputs to two inputs.

Exactly but my guess is it would be extremely hard to keep the two beams parallel, they would probably start to split at a given distance. I'm just wondering if anyone may know about it or if they have tried it themselves.

just have to align the beams on a target at a long distance, I am sure it has been done in the race for more powerful lasers.

http://www.kirikoo.net/images/7Genesis-1-20040929-010310.jpg

http://forum.presence-pc.com/overclex/TuningPC/-PROJET-projet-de-projecteur-laser-associe-au-PC--sujet-2559-9.htm

A good beam splitter/combiner is the RGB prism inside a LCD proj.
Also very cool for seperating the colors from Halogen,Halide,Sodium light sources and White light LED`s.
I can add I have used them upto 5 total watts of laser energy with no problems.

You should post this question at Google's Groups alt.laser and sci.optics.

I have done this a couple ways, the easiest is a cube splitter. if both beans are ploarized you can tune the amount of each by turning the laser. This will teach you near field / far field tuning. dots line up on top of each other at about 5 in, and again at several feet.

Jeff

Ttaz, what is actually being shown in that picture? Considering that none of the link is in english I can't really tell, but it looks to me like its a white beam being divided through a prism.

what is shown is a homemade show-laser (or lasershow ? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif ....well you understand what I mean)

I think the beams of 3 lasers are 'added' from the right to the left ....
Blue/green (?) Argon at the right (I think that the green components are suppressed), Green DPSS 'added', and then the red one..... I think all the beams are added with dichroïc mirrors....

The post is in French, so if you want me to translate something (ahem... well 'try to' /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif ), there's no problem /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I'll take the time to read all the thread to see if I've misunderstood something