Design of a dye laser for nonlinear spectroscopy

Special requirements should be met by a pulsed dye laser in order to provide reproducible data in a nonlinear experiment. The cavity and pumping laser are chosen to minimize effects due to detailed dye characteristics. A suitable ruby pumping laser is described.     

自由运转半导体激光器边模间的强度关联

半导体激光器的强度和相位起伏一直是影响其应用的关键所在.在实验上研究了自由运转模式下半导体激光器的强度噪声.采用自制的分辨率为0.01 nm的光谱仪成功地分辨出数十个边模，并利用射频低噪声光电探测器系统，分析了激光器的主模与边模之间以及各边模之间的强度噪声关联特性.从实验上证实了主模与边模之间的负关联效应，同时观察到边模之间存在的周期性负关联.该结果对进一步认识半导体激光器噪声的产生机制及强度压缩光的产生机制具有重要意义. 关键词： 半导体激光器 强度噪声 负关联     

The nonlinear optical response of a fluorine-containing azoic dye

The nonlinear optical nonlinearities of a fluorine-containing azoic dye in tetrahydrofuran have been investigated by using Z-scan technique with picosecond and nanosecond lasers. The experimental results reveal that the azoic dye has large optical nonlinearity under the excitations of picosecond and nanosecond 532 nm. At the picosecond 532 nm the solution presents negative nonlinear refraction due to the electronic effect, while the larger nonlinear refraction under nanosecond laser excitation is induced by thermal effect. Moreover, the different nonlinear absorption behavior under picosecond and nanosecond excitations is analyzed.     

Stimulated brillouin scattering in SF6 with a free-running XeCl laser as pump

A XeCl laser system without dispersive elements is used to investigate near threshold reflectivity and phase-conjugation (PC) fidelity of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) mirrors with SF₆ as the active medium. Using different focal-length lenses to focus the broadband laser radiation into the Brillouin medium, it was found that at threshold the effective interaction length for SBS is equal to the confocal parameter and that the SBS gain is equal to its steady-state value for monochromatic pumping. High PC-fidelity values ranging from 0.8–1.0 were found under most of the experimental conditions investigated.     

Color center laser pumped with a DCM dye laser

A CW, DCM dye laser has been used to pump a RbCl:Li crystal in a color center laser. The DCM dye laser was pumped by the 488 nm and 514.5 nm lines of an argon ion laser. When used in a broad band configuration the dye laser had a power output in the TEM₀₀ mode in excess of 600 mW at a wavelength of 655 nm. An output power in excess of 10 mW at 2.73 μm was possible from the RbCl:Li crystal in a Burleigh FCL for an input power of 600 mW at 655 nm. This method of pumping for the RbCl:Li alleviates the need for both argon ion and krypton ion laser pumps for the Burleigh FCL. All three crystals can be pumped to the specification power levels with a single argon ion laser.     

Pulse properties of a synchronously mode-locked,cavity dumped,picosecond dye laser system

A synchronously mode-locked, cavity-dumped picosecond dye laser is described. The structure and intensity of the picosecond pulses measured under different conditions are reported. It was found that the structure of the pulses from the synchronously pumped dye laser depends critically on the length of the Ar⁺ laser pulses. At the shortest Ar⁺ laser pulses of about 70 ps the dye pulses are as short as 1.1 ps. With Ar⁺ laser pulses of 200 ps the dye laser pulses contains a broad satellite pulse which contains a large fraction of the total intensity. When a cavity dumper is added to the system one gets dye laser pulses 15–20 ps long with a substructure, which indicates incomplete mode-locking. Well mode-locked 1.5–2.0 ps pulses were obtained in the red part of the dye laser action spectrum, i.e. 620–650 nm for R6G, 595–608 nm for R 110 and 657–662 nm for RB, respectively. Addition of mode-locking dyes also improved the pulse quality at some wavelengths.     

Synchronized picosecond pulse generation with a synchronously pumped dye laser and a compressed Nd: YAG laser for non-degenerate transient grating experiments

We have set up a laser system which simultaneously provides synchronized picosecond pulses in the visible and at a wavelength of 1.06 m with a repetition rate of 76 MHz. The set-up consists of a dye laser synchronously pumped by the second harmonic of a cw mode-locked Nd:YAG laser and a fiber-grating compressor for the fundamental wavelength of the Nd;YAG laser. Crosscorrelation measurments reveal the time jitter between the two pulse trains to be less than 10 ps. As a first application we have performed non-degenerate transient grating experiments in semiconductors. The non-degenerate technique allows to use excitation energies well above the bandgap energy and to separate non-linear refractive index effects from photoinduced absorption or transmission changes.     

A dye laser with a transverse-flow cuvette

A new type of transverse-flow dye laser is described which features a number of technical advantages; among these are a beam divergence of less than 6 mrad and stable operational characteristics even at 50 hz. The low Fresnel number of the cavity results in low-order emission modes.     

A dye laser with a polyurethane matrix

A dye laser with a polyurethane matrix cured by polycondensation is studied. An increase in the conversion efficiency, service life, optical stability, and tuning range in comparison with lasing media produced by radical polymerization is demonstrated.     

Spectral narrowing in a dye laser with non-resonant feedback

The temporal development of the spectral output of a flashlamp pumped dye laser, having non-resonant feedback achieved by means of fibre optics, has been studied using a streak camera. Spectral narrowing from 40 nm (the bandwidth of the spontaneous fluorescence of the system) to 2.5 nm has been observed, with the degree of spectral narrowing depending upon the output power.     

Analysis of nonlinear response in a body dithered ring laser gyro

We present a solution of the dither equation in a ring laser gyro. This solution is based on an application of Floquet theory to the linear equation derived from the original dither equation. The circumvention of the zero locking band as well as the appearance of higher order locking zones are discussed.     

Pulse structure studies and absolute cavity length determination for a synchronously pumped picosecond dye laser

Second harmonic cross correlation functions of a pulse with its near neighbor have been studied in a synchronously pumped cw dye laser. Measurements were made both as a function of dye laser cavity length mismatch and the number of cavity round trips separating the correlated pulses. The pulse envelope is found to have a characteristic interpulse frequency determined by the pump laser, whereas the pulse substructure has a characteristic frequency determined by the dye laser cavity length. The cross correlation measurements allow experimental determination of the dye laser length corresponding to exact synchrony. In contrast to theoretical predictions the length of exact synchrony corresponds to optimum pulse shape and duration. Our results are discussed in terms of a simple model which leads to pulse duration estimates as much as twice those obtained by conventional analysis of autocorrelation traces.     

Opto-acoustic spectroscopy with a visible CW dye laser

The first use of a tunable visible laser in conjunction with an opto-acoustic cell is described. By using a longitudinal resonance of the gas cell NO₂ can be detected around 10 p.p.b., the same order of detectivity as in the infrared. The use of the technique for studying photodissociation in the visible and u.v. is discussed.     

Coherent spectroscopy with a distributed feedback dye laser

A simple and flexible distributed feedback dye laser source pumped by the harmonic of a mode-locked YAG laser is described. Measurements of dephasing times of isotopic and hot bands in CS₂ liquid exploiting both the frequency and time-resolution of this source are reported.     

Laser scattering with a rapidly tuned dye laser

A facility is described for the measurement of the total spectrum produced by laser radiation scattered from a plasma during one laser pulse. The dye laser is electrooptically tuned by a high frequency voltage applied to a modified Lyot filter within its cavity. The scattered spectrum is registrated together with the laser reference signal by a transient recorder and processed afterwards. Both measuring time and inaccuracy could be reduced drastically. Scattering experiments have been accomplished in a H₂ cascade of 5 mm diameter arc at atmospheric pressure, and at 14 and 20 A, respectively. For this arc very precise spectroscopic results are available for checking the accuracy of the scattering measurements. Both the spectroscopic line and continuum experiments yield a temperature which lies between electron and ion temperature if there is no local thermal equilibrium, whereas the pure electron temperature is provided by the scattered spectrum. The agreement between spectroscopic and scattering results within the high error limits is the experimental proof for the applicability of this new scattering technique which requires only about one hundredth of the measuring time, as compared with the usual shot-to-shot registration.