Some laser table porn. This shows an iodine vapor cell fluorescing from some ~520 nm light passing through, as well as scatter off of other components. Visible lasers make for quite a show; not everyone we’ve had in the lab believes that our IR lasers systems are really aligned since they can’t see the light.
Aah, visible lasers. So very easy to align. 1 um and 1.5 um lasers aren’t so much worse, although they do mean having one of those damn spotter scopes in your hand half the time. 2 um lasers just suck, though; spotter scopes (at least, non-exotic ones) and phosphor cards won’t see them at all. Damn shame that Ho and Tm lasers are the wave of the future for a lot of our applications.
Flame-sealed melting point capillary containing a small iodine crystal plus a Raman spectrometer argon laser source. Resonance fluorescence is awesome! Curiously, compare caps that are evacuated vs. ambient pressure for intensity of visual purple.
http://www.wellesley.edu/Physics/Tbauer/LIF/Absorption.jpg
http://home.sou.edu/~chapman/ch445/i2uvvis.gif
http://itl.chem.ufl.edu/4411L_f96/i2_lif/i2_lif_il.html
In Case You Don’t Have Enough Iodine in Your Diet.
Just go to Japan and order some food.