Color of laser beam

The dominant color of a laser is red and or green and as we progress there are more colors coming into play. Can anyone say what is the significance of the colors and the intended use or benefit to be derived from the different colors?

Pancho

Pedsam2 said:

The dominant color of a laser is red and or green and as we progress there are more colors coming into play. Can anyone say what is the significance of the colors and the intended use or benefit to be derived from the different colors?

Pancho

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They're just different colours, they look cool...

correction: blu-ray allows for a smaller focusing point and there for being able to wright more information per unit of area.

And there has always been different colours around apart from red and green, since most gas lasers product anything from orange, to cyan to white light.

Asherz said:

They're just different colours, they look cool...

The only useful one would be violet, since it allows for faster writing times on discs, hence blu-ray players and writers.

And there has always been different colours around apart from red and green, since most gas lasers product anything from orange, to cyan to white light.

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Hate to be a stickler, but the reason 405nm diodes are used in new-age optical media is data density. Simply put, 405nm can be focused into a smaller "point" allowing for more data per area. Then again it does entail more data being written per "spin" so you are also correct.

brtaman said:

Hate to be a stickler, but the reason 405nm diodes are used in new-age optical media is data density. Simply put, 405nm can be focused into a smaller "point" allowing for more data per area.

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Yea I thought I would be wrong, I was gonna change it but I'm too tired... I'll edit it now. Cheers for the correction

The green laser is best for viewing, as the human eye is most sensitive to green.

Green lasers are more expensive to construct than red, so most cheap pointers are red, however the human eye is not nearly as sensitive to the red, so they appear dimmer.



Welcome to LPF. Enjoy your time with us here.

Check the sams laser faq page, loads of explanations there.

I also included a side view of the typical green pointer to help you better understand the complexity of how they work.




Sams......

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/lasersam.htm

I have included a handy guide to assist you in finding what you need.

Lol. Love that picture showing how to search Laser Build. Awesome!

For full color displays you need red, green, and blue light sources. Therefore, red, green, and blue lasers are commercially important for full color display technologies.

Also, all the colors have important industrial or technological uses. Blue lasers get used in all kinds of businesses, from genetics research (hence people buying DNA sequencers for the argon laser inside) to umpteen other applications.

Pointers are just a side affect of all the more common uses of lasers. No one is out there inventing a new laser because it'll make a cool color. Everything you see in pointers was invented for another reason, and we're just lucky enough that people decided to also put those technologies into pointers on occasion. Our entire hobby is a side effect of industrial, scientific, and other commercial uses of lasers.