Magenta HeNe

[TheTeslaWarrior]

i was playing around with my gas lasers today, i decided to shine my argon through my little HeNe tube. here's what i got:

 

[anselm]

So you pumped your (unpowered) HeNe tube into stimulated emission by means
of an Argon laser.....? Cool, I guess.

 

[Bluefan]

Put the beam through a grating or prism and see what is actually coming out, I'm curious

 

[james1095]

The HeNe tube is powered, you can clearly see the plasma through the holes in the cathode. The result is the same as if the two beams were combined with a dichro. Dial down the argon and you will get something resembling white assuming it's a multiline.

 

[TheTeslaWarrior]

sorry, been a crazy week.
anselm: the tube is powered
bluefan:

James1095: the beams are combined with dichros, the mirrors on the HeNe reflect red and pass blue. turning down the argon would not make white, the dichros on the HeNe reflect a large portion of the green lines. after passing through the HeNe the beam is blue instead of the cyan color it originally had.

 

[james1095]

I meant with an external dichro, the way argon and HeNe beams are traditionally combined to get white in small laser show projectors.

I'm surprised the internal mirrors reflect that much green, it varies, but many of them will pass quite a bit of anything below red. You'd be hard pressed to get true white, but I've done the same thing and seen something that could almost pass as white. Not that it makes any sense to combine it that way other than for fun.