Are wave plates the same as Dichro?

[laserLips]

Look at these ... http://www.sp3plus.co.uk/waveplates-overview.php

Are they the same as a Dichro which I can use to combine the red/green and then the yellow/blue?

Tar
Graham

[Laser Ben]

No, to put it simply, they rotate the polarization of a laser.

[laserLips]

My god, this is better than 36663...
36663 is a service you text a question that you cant find the answer to and they text you back is great speed. (not that I'd use ut for laser questions)

Cheers Ben.

[The_Doctor]

I've read a few times that a quarter wave plate will rotate the polar plane of linearly polarised light by 90 degrees, and that a half wave plate will turn linearly polarised light to circularly polarised light. Taking those two points together seems to set more questions than it answers.

As far as I can tell, an eight-wave plate might be useful to prevent retroreflection death by rotating by a quarter turn once the light returns to a laser after passing back through the plate, so a PBS can be used to make sure that light never gets back to it. It's expensive though, and not practical even where a PBS is already in use, because light coming out of one diode can hit a mirror, return via the PBS to the second diode. It won't kill it but it will be reflected back to the mirror again and this time return to the source diode, killing it. Fun, no?
No.