My friend Jon Singer has been experimenting with creating a relatively-cheap, straightforward flashlamp-pumped dye laser. This first-blush version uses caps he bought on eBay. As he refines the design, he hopes to avoid as many commercial components as possible. This proof-of-concept build was attempting to answer the musical question: Is a dozen Joules enough to threshold a dye? Answer: yes.
Jon also recently called me, excited, ’cause he’d managed to get three dyes to oscillate in the same cuvette to create RGB laser light! The guy’s a monster. Half the time, I don’t really understand what he’s talking about, but I always feel smarter for having done so. See his “RGB ‘White’ Dye Laser Light from a Single Cuvette” research report here.
It’s a LASER BEAM, Bozo!
I figure we can extract at least ten to the twenty-first photons per cubic centimeter which will give one kilojoule per cubic centimeter at 600 nanometers, or, one megajoule per liter.
Hey Ick, you were just kidding about exploding, right? Ick? It’s a joke, right?