High power narrowband pulsed dye laser oscillator-amplifier-system

Construction details and operating characteristics are reported for a pulsed dye laser oscillator followed by a three-stage dye laser amplifier. The system is excited with 220 mJ of the second or120 mJ of the third harmonic radiation of a Nd-YAG laser. With Rhodamine dyes the output energy exceeds 55 mJ (9 MW peak power). Coumarin dyes provide pulses of more than 15 mJ (3 MW). Spectral narrowing to less than 260 MHz or 2.7 × 10 ^-4 nm at 565 nm is achieved by a single intracavity etalon of 37.5 GHz free spectral range. Gas pressure tuning allows a continuous linear variation of the laser frequency over more than 3.9 × 10³ GHz (4 nm at 565 nm). The frequency doubled laser output provides tunable UV light of narrow bandwidth (1.4 × 10^-4 nm) and of peak powers exceeding 3 MW.