Which lasers are visible

Category: Space Published: February 14, While traveling through the vacuum of space, laser beams are invisible unless shot directly into your eye. The experience you know of as vision consists of light entering your eyes and being detecting by cells on your retinas. You can't see any light that never enters your eyes. A beam of light, including laser light, will not enter your eye unless aimed directly at it or reflected directly into it by an object. Lasers with Direct Visible Emission Laser which directly emit visible light constitute a minority — most lasers emit in the infrared spectral region.

Some examples of solid-state lasers emitting visible light are: Various laser diodes can emit visible light. The first demonstrated laser was a ruby laser emitting at Titanium—sapphire lasers emit mostly in the infrared spectral region, but can be tuned down to roughly nm.

There are various upconversion lasers , including both bulk and fiber lasers , with visible light emission. There are also various gas lasers emitting visible light: The helium—neon laser was the first gas laser with visible emission. It can emit on various visible wavelengths , including the well-known Argon ion lasers emit mostly at Krypton ion lasers emit at various wavelengths throughout the visible spectrum, in particular at Various methods allow the generation of visible light in laser diodes via nonlinear frequency conversion : The most frequently used approach particularly for green and blue emission is frequency doubling , either intracavity or in an external nonlinear crystal single-pass or resonant.

Most common are green -emitting laser sources based on frequency-doubled nm neodymium lasers. Sum frequency generation in a nonlinear crystal can generate visible light. For example, sum frequency mixing of a nm Nd:YAG laser and a 1. A Raman laser can be pumped with light from a regular laser. This is most often done with solid-state bulk lasers , which may be Q-switched or continuous-wave , and often intracavity frequency doubled.

For broadband visible radiation, there are laser sources involving supercontinuum generation. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What makes some laser beams visible and other laser beams invisible?

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Revo Revo Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Colin K Colin K 6, 1 1 gold badge 26 26 silver badges 40 40 bronze badges. The strength of the laser. The dust or mist in the air. Rick Rick 1. You do touch on important ideas impurities - maybe you could expand on this? Featured on Meta.