UV laser with visible beam?

[Schrecken_Licht]

Check out this oddball:
http://cgi.ebay.com/C53243-Spectra-...ryZ53141QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I saw the description and I thought the seller was full of it, but he/she was going by the label on the laser - 337nm but yet putting out an apparently blue beam rather like a 473nm DPSS or a blue-line argon....clearly it isn't an argon, though.

337nm is well into UV but the seller and his camera can see the beam....yet at that wavelength I can't imagine that it's really that blue - the beam must be fluorescing rather like when you hit something white with a 405nm. I've never seen a laser like this - must be a DPSS of some sort.

 

[pullbangdead]

If it's just the dot, then yeah, it's just fluorescing jsut like with 405nm light, 337nm will fluoresce everything that 405nm will in the visible regime.

 

[...]

That is a TEA N2 laser, which puts out super high power (as high as a megawatt for some), but very short pulses of UV light. As pullbangdead pointed out, the 337nm light is pretty much invisible to human eyeballs, but will make paper (and just about everything else) fluoresce. Also some cameras can see 337nm, but it is pretty low on the sensitivity scale for cameras. You will definitely not be able to see the 'beam' without some type of uv fluorescing smoke. That .4mj output pulse is enough to vaporise pits in most metals when focused, although with only 6mw average power it would be a pretty slow process to do anything useful (I estimate about 10 minutes to cut through a 1" piece of black electrical tape).

However, that laser can also be used to pump just about any die you want, to make all sorts of fun colors from red to yellow to green to blue, but it would take a fair bit of work to make work. BTW, that laser cost in the $10,000-$30,000 when it was bought.