Could sunlight be used as a laser if magnified?

Answer 1

If you have a large convex lens with a long focal length and a smaller convex lens with a shorter focal length, you could use the first lens to focus the sunlight, increasing the intensity and use the second lens to collimate the light into a narrow parallel beam. This would be capable of burning, with the power increasing with the ratio of the focal lengths (and obviously the brightness of the sun).

However, this would not be a laser. First because of the way it is produced - a laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is produced by energising a gain medium within an optical cavity and sunlight is produced by an exothermic reaction. Second because laser light is monochromatic and coherent and sunlight has neither of these properties.

Answer 2

Yes, but it is probably not worth doing...

Sunlight is certainly very powerful, but it contains a whole range of frequencies of light, including the whole spectrum of visible light.

A laser by comparison, gives off only one single frequency of light and even then, the waves all have to be in synchronisation with each other (coherent).

The only way of doing this would seem to be some sort of sharply-tuned optical bandpass filter. That is, it would let only a specific wavelength of light through and discard all the other frequencies. The light left after doing this would be pretty weak and nothing like as powerful as the original sunlight was.

To make the remaining light coherent, you would have to do something like bounce it backwards and forwards between a mirror and a half-mirror.

The result is probably too weak a laser to be worth the cost. Far more powerful lasers are already commercially available and for probably less money than the equipment for a Sun laser would cost.

You are right, it could be done - But sorry, it is probably not very practical after all.

I hope this helps?!

Answer 3

No.

You could produce a very strong beam, but not a laser, which is Light Amplified by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

What that means is that in a crystal structure, a single photon of the correct frequency acts on an atom or molecule, causing it to emit further photons of the same wavelength and phase as the original. This "snowballs" until unthinkable numbers of photons, all exactly the same wavelength, are running down the crystal in synch, to eventually emerge at the end as a laser beam.

You can't modify photons from sunlight to make them have all the same wavelength, nor to set them in phase with one another. Even then, it wouldn't be amplified, nor a "stimulated emission". So you can't make it a laser from a sunbeam.

Answer 4

No, it would not be a "laser."

However, Archimedes is said to have used parabolic mirrors to set ship's assaulting his city on fire, by focusing and concentrating sunlight like a magnifying glass.

Answer 5

No - a laser produces coherent light at a single wavelength. Sunlight is incoherent light spread over a wide range of wavelengths.

Answer 6

yes it can, try getting a magnifying glass or glasses (if you wear them) draw a small black spot on some paper... then hold the magnifying glass i such a way that it focuses purely on the black spot... result? fire X

Answer 7

The sun is like a super laser, don't look directly at it!

Answer 8

no this is impossible as a laser is a diferent type of light on a totally different frequency

Answer 9

Have u ever seen what sunlight does to a leaf if you held a magnifying glass over it? Please be careful!!!

Answer 10

no, the waves are not in sync with each other
for laserlight thjat is required.

errrr what do you mean with "magnifying light" ?
do you mean to make it bigger ?