beam broadening in a dye cell

You see the beam of an argon laser passing through a dye cell (no idea what dye I actually used). I interrupted the output of the laser with my finger (ouch!). Some sort of broadening is taking place in the dye. Well my guess is that this has to do something with liquid crystals as the passed beam shows an interesting diffraction pattern, which is usual for liquid crystals as far as i know. Some sort of non linear optics.....

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• beam
• broadening
• laser
• argon
• argonlaser
• argon-laser
• dye
• cell
• fluorescence
• n2
• N2
• optics
• tea
• nitrogen