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3 votes
2 answers
3k views

Why does laser light not bend (refract) when it travels from air to water?

I passed green laser light from air to water but to my suprise the light doesn't bend towards normal even though I changed the angle of incidence.It goes undeflected ,Is it because of its higher ...
Sanjay S's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
209 views

Do high powered lasers refract differently than other light?

So I have a question: I am told that there are naval lasers that target over 100's of miles ship-to-ship (not ship to air). Someone asserted that powerful lasers would refract differently than light. ...
Marco Chacon's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
57 views

Decoherence of a laser beam via oil emulsion

This is sort of a followup to an earlier question that I posted regarding how to destroy the temporal and/or spatial coherence of a laser beam. It was suggested to me that I could use a rapidly ...
slithy_tove's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
38 views

Why are $\rm ZnSe$ beam-combiners typically "optimized" for a 45º angle of incidence?

Everywhere I look it seems that $\rm ZnSe$ beam combiners (as the ones sometimes used in $\rm CO_2$ [10600nm IR] laser cutters) are "optimized" or designed to work at a 45º angle of ...
jarshvor's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
47 views

Is it possible to measure the temperature of a candle by the diffraction method?

I am reading a book " Physics, Fun and Beyond" by Eduardo de Campos Valadares. In his book, he is mentioning about an experiment "bending laser beams with hot air." I am posting a ...
ofenerci's user avatar
  • 221
1 vote
1 answer
130 views

Total internal reflection doesn't occur when it is supposed to

I figured out that when I aim a laser beam on my window at an arbitrary angle, the total internal reflection doesn't occur whatsoever. What's more, the refracted beam seems to be pretty intense. It ...
Sgg8's user avatar
  • 513
1 vote
1 answer
73 views

Requirements for Z-scan or I-scan measurements of nonlinear optical materials

I am looking to understand what requirements there are for any version of Z-Scan technique or the I-scan technique. These techniques are used for measuring nonlinear absorption and nonlinear ...
jgk5141's user avatar
  • 21
0 votes
1 answer
79 views

Why when looking at a laser's reflection the laser appears to have a ring of noise around the central beam?

When pointing my presentation laser at a semi glossy object like stained wood or my skin I see noise, almost like TV static (it also appears to be moving). Is this a property of the laser's refraction ...
girraiffe's user avatar
  • 103
2 votes
1 answer
204 views

Reflectivity coefficients at dielectric interface

In the book Principles of Lasers by Orazio Svelto, at chapter 4.3 "Wave Reflection and Transmission at a Dielectric Interface", the author tells that If the wave is initially in the medium ...
SimoBartz's user avatar
  • 1,904
1 vote
2 answers
48 views

Does Heisenberg uncertainty affect Snells law?

Assuming an ideal single frequency plane wave, we can determine the angle of retraction for the light beam. But the more I make my pulse shorter, the less certain I am in the frequency and thus the ...
KrNeki's user avatar
  • 91
0 votes
3 answers
219 views

Pointing a laser to a mirror on the moon in spite of refraction by earth's atmosphere

I was reading that the Apollo missions left a laser reflector (Mirror) on the moon for scientific use. Having read some of the controversy here and elsewhere about lasers being affected by refraction ...
Gerry Thompson's user avatar
0 votes
0 answers
31 views

How close can refractive index be to one? Classical vs Quantum calculation?

How close can the refraction index of a gas be to one such that it can still be used in classical calculations? For example imagine we have $n-1=10^{-22}$. In [1] I find $n-1=\frac{\gamma_{mol}P}{2 ...
user avatar
-3 votes
1 answer
733 views

Bending a Laser Beam [closed]

We can bend a Laser beam by varying the refraction coefficient of the air. We can bend a Laser beam by dispersing into the air small particles that have the same effect on the Laser Beam and small ...
user36636's user avatar
  • 182
3 votes
1 answer
65 views

Why does the intensity of the scattered light vary when a monochromatic laser is shined into a transparent object?

When a laser is shined into a glass ball such as this video (link) or a bottle of water (link) the light is refracted through the whole transparent body. However, the intensity of the light scattered ...
user3549378's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
3k views

Why does a laser beam stay coherent when it passes through glass?

If I have a coherent laser beam and I shine it through some glass, the light will slow down because it will interact weakly with the atoms in the glass. However, the beam that comes out the other side ...
JJH's user avatar
  • 187
0 votes
1 answer
76 views

Curved Light stream?

I was wondering, a while ago, i asked if there is a way to bend light someway, which I got the answer is index of refraction. Which is when light passes through a material it refracts to a certain ...
C. Jordan's user avatar
  • 273
0 votes
2 answers
74 views

Working principle of an optical stretcher

I understand that while using an optical stretcher experimental apparatus we attach a small dielectric ball to the specimen of study which can either be a DNA molecule, a Biological cell or any ...
Sahas's user avatar
  • 107
2 votes
2 answers
227 views

Can you burn invisible jelly balls with a laser?

Suppose you have some jelly balls with similar refractive index as that of water, like in this video. You put them in water, making it invisible. So, the optical behavior of the balls should be ...
AlphaLife's user avatar
  • 12.5k
0 votes
1 answer
76 views

Gain medium and the speed of light

I am currently studying optics, and when taking a closer look at refractive indices, I stumbled across gain mediums. On Wikipedia it states that gain mediums can have a refractive index of $n<0$. ...
BluNova897's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
149 views

Can a powder be transparent?

I know that even glass powder is white due to refraction and internal reflection. So to be transparent, the index of refraction would need to be close to 1 (air). I also know that the index of ...
Daniel F's user avatar
  • 131
0 votes
2 answers
134 views

Can a laser beam be captured in prism?

is there a way to shoot a laser at a prism (or something) and have it glow when the laser hits it? I want to make a small box with a small hole in it. With the prism in the box, when the laser is ...
TheBigOnion's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
186 views

Effect of the refractive index of a transparent layer coating a particle?

I am modelling a cell as a particle coated by a layer of a material whose refraction index might change. This layer is to resemble the membrane. The purpose of the model is to simulate what happens ...
Keine's user avatar
  • 25
0 votes
0 answers
809 views

How to calculate the Refractive index of a glass sheet

My question is how to find the $n$ of a glass sheet with just aiming a laser beam to that. I've got lot of ways that let me find the $n$ ( Refractive index ) but I need the whole part of the ...
David 2000's user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

Using a transfer matrix to calculate beam width of off-axis Gaussian beam?

I have been reading a lot about ABCD matrices that are used for ray tracing. I can calculate the output offset $r_{o}$ (with respect to the optical axis) and the angle $\theta$ of the ray by $$ \...
ChrisF's user avatar
  • 51
1 vote
0 answers
275 views

Laser travelling through a radially graded index of refraction

A laser beam propagates through a region whose refractive index varies as $\mu=\mu_0(\frac{r}{r_0})$. At a distance of R the beam makes an angle of 30° with the normal. Find the minimum seperation ...
Akshay Bodhare's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
1k views

Laser Refraction

Can you take a laser beam of high intensity and refract it in a way to convert it to a safe level? White light traveling through a prism refracts into the individual wavelengths, could something ...
Sam Sabin's user avatar
  • 181
6 votes
4 answers
5k views

How do "holographic plates" work?

I asked a question about laser stage lighting over at Audio Video Production, and received an excellent answer that explained that laser clusters are generated from a single beam via something called ...
Polynomial's user avatar