A new family of lasing dyes from an old family of fluors

We report the development of a new series of laser dyes and describe the performance of these materials. This work was spurred by the realization that few laser dyes have an optimally shaped fluorescence emission for lasing action. Most of the dipole strength of the transition is concentrated in the 0.0 band, where lasing cannot occur, and very little is concentrated in the vibrational satellites 0–1 and 0–2 where lasing is possible. The new dyes are unsymmetrical materials which may be considered as a hybrid of a rhodamine molecule and a fluorescein molecule (fig. 1), and we consider them to be cyclized merocyanines. One dye in particular, 6-dimethylamino-9-o-carboxyphenylxanthen-3H-one (labelled SNH-8), has given power output and time stability better than the preferred lasing dye Rhodamine 6G. The effects of dye structure and of acid-base transitions on lasing activity will be discussed briefly. The theory of band-shaping and the detailed optical parameters of the new dyes will be presented separately.