Talk:Ti-sapphire laser

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[edit] harmful? removing dopant?

5 mJ? So if I stick my finger in the beam, I won't get hurt? What happens to lasers if the dopant is removed? lysdexia 00:57, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

At 5 mJ, 1 kHz you will feel that your skin is heated if the beam hits the same spot during a few seconds (the beam usually has a large diameter, 1 cm or so). If the pulse duration is below 100 fs you may get red spots a few hours later, similar to sunburn. It is much much more unhealthy if you get the beam in your eyes (you will almost certainly be blind in that eye).
You cannot remove the dopant from an existing Ti:sapphire crystal, but if you replace the crystal by a pure sapphire one, the laser won't work.
Do you feel these things should be discussed in the article?
Han-Kwang (talk) 01:10, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Focusing the 1cm beam onto air or anything else will obliterate it. And the second order index of refraction at these intensities will result in colour creation and neat rainbow patterns on the wall.

Instantaneous powers should be given to explain this.

Also regens should include multi-pass amps as well -- Anon

I updated the article. I tried to make a picture of the effect that you describe, which is neat during guided tours. It turns out to be hard to photograph in a convincing way. Han-Kwang (talk) 15:47, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Article name

So I've never seen the name Ti-sapphire before, but rather Ti:sapphire, so I did a quick google search, and all the top hits aside from us use the latter. Scanning through it looks like about only 1:10 use the hypenated name. So I've changed to a consistent terminology in the article and added {{wrongtitle}} to make it clear. — Laura Scudder | Talk 14:37, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Good call, I just added the same to the Er-YAG laser and Nd-YAG laser articles. One odd thing though: There's an (apparently) valid redirect article from Nd:YAG laser. Perhaps having a colon in the name is valid after all? The limitation may be left over from an older version of MediaWiki. In that case, the articles should be moved, if possible. -- DrBob 17:20, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Ah, according to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions), a colon is now only a problem if the prefix is a namespace. That probably means Ti:, Nd:, and Er: are OK. I may try moving the pages. -- Bob Mellish 18:03, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
Turns out we also have to worry about overlapping with interlanguage links. Apparently the Tigrinya Wikipedia (ti:Main Page) does exist, so we can't move Ti: pages. It looks like both Nd and Er are unclaimed though, so those can be moved (although the Nd:Yag will be in limbo if someone ever starts a Ndebele, North Wikipedia — see ISO 639#N). — Laura Scudder | Talk 01:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)