Color center laser pumped by a flashlamp-pumped dye laser

A reliable, pulsed, color center laser is described which provides a pulse energy up to 0.4 mJ in a wavelength range from 2.4 μm to 3.3 μm at a bandwidth below 20 GHz. A simple, broadband, flashlamp-pumped dye laser is used as the pump source. A new transverse pumping scheme of F-centers is described using hydrogenated color center crystal which allows to pump color center lasers with high energy pump pulses.     

Full-automatic broad-band wavelength control of a pulsed dye laser

A full-automatic wavelength controled pulsed dye laser has been developed. With the control system, dye laser oscillations of nanosecond pulses are tuned to any wavelength in the visible or scanned in any sweep mode keeping the nearly transform-limited bandwidth of 0.45 GHz. A mechanical tuning of the wavelength is employed, such that the motion of three wavelength selectors is synchronized to give a smooth and precise wavelength control. The basic principle underlying the tuning scheme, various requirements to be met in system construction, and the practical performance of automatic wavelength control are described in this paper.     

A single mode flashlamp-pumped dye laser

A flashlamp-pumped dye laser capable of single transverse and longitudinal mode operation is described. The maximum untuned power output is 2 MW cm^-2, TEM₀₀ mode. By employing three intracavity Fabry—Pérot etalons, a minimum spectral width of 4 MHz, stable to within 12 MHz, has been obtained.     

A reliable thyratron-switched flashlamp-pumped dye laser

A thyratron-switched flashlamp-pumped dye laser capable of an average power of approximately 1 watt operating at 40 pulses/sec with a bandwidth of several GHz is described. The lamps are run in a high-current simmering mode to decrease lamp inductance and extend lamp life. In heavy use the laser system has proven to be very reliable with lamp life-times in excess of 10⁷ shots and half-power dye lifetimes of better than 10⁶ J/1 for Rhodamine 6G.     

Tuning characteristic of flashlamp-pumped dye laser with oxygen

The effect of oxygen in the flashlamp-pumped tunable Rhodamine 6G dye laser is experimentally studied. It becomes clear that the laser tuning range is shifted by adding oxygen in the dye solution.     

Locking of a flashlamp-pumped dye laser at small injection powers

Experiments have been carried out on the injection-locking of a pulsed dye laser to an argon-laser-pumped CW dye laser of 50 MHz linewidth without longitudinal mode matching. With the inclusion of a Fabry-Perot etalon within the ring laser arrangement of the pulsed laser, the initiation of injection locking and saturation occur at low injection powers.     

Influence of chemical impurities on the performance of a flashlamp-pumped dye laser

The presence of ? 5% chemical impurities in Rhodamine 6G [Cl-] is shown to decrease the fluorescence quantum efficiency, increase the self-absorption cross-section, reduce lasing efficiency and shorten the usable lifetime of the lasing solution.     

Streak camera investigation of an actively mode-locked flashlamp-pumped dye laser

Direct measurements using a picosecond streak camera have shown that single pulses of 2–6 ps duration are obtained in the middle and latter stages of the output train of an actively mode-locked flashlamp-pumped dye laser. Measured pulse-widths showed no critical dependence on matching the cavity length to that of the driving master oscillator. In contrast pulses selected from the early stages of the train exhibited a complicated structure.     

Dual wavelength dye laser incorporating distributed feedback

A dual wavelength dye laser has been constructed in which one wavelength is selected by distributed feedback and the other by a conventional external cavity tuned by a grazing incidence/Littrow grating pair. Both wavelengths are emitted collinearly and simultaneously, show the same temporal profile (10 ns pulse), have comparable linewidths (0.1/0.2 Å), are of comparable energies (0.5 mJ), and are independently tunable. The laser exhibits the low amplified spontaneous emission properties normally associated with distributed feedback lasers. Gain competition effects have been examined.     

The spectral narrowing of a high-power flashlamp-pumped dye laser by injection of external narrow-band radiation

A method of increasing the injection-locking efficiency by external narrow-band radiation relying on a space-frequency separation in a nonlinear absorber (spectral contraster) placed into the high-power dye-laser cavity is proposed. It is shown that this method permits an increase of the energy conversion efficiency into a narrow-band line ( 10^–3 nm) up to 90% with a laser output energy of about 1 J and a pulse duration of more than 1 µs.     

Passive mode locking of DCM and Rhodamine 101 flashlamp-pumped dye laser systems

The passive mode locking of the laser dyes DCM and Rhodamine 101 which operate in similar spectral regions, has been carried out in a simple flashlamp-pumped system. Pulses of 5 ps tunable from 618 nm to 693 nm with peak powers in excess of 5 MW have been obtained. Several suitable saturable absorbing species have been identified.     

Spectral narrowing of a flashlamp-pumped,waveguide dye laser by amplification of tunable narrow-band cw radiation

Spectral narrowing of the broad-band emission from a flashlamp-pumped dye laser, which consisted of a slab waveguide high-gain amplifier in conjunction with a high-loss resonator, is reported.The pulsed laser oscillator was driven by a cw dye laser oscillating in several longitudinal modes. An energy output up to 10 mJ per pulse has been obtained with a driving power of 10 mW, showing the possibility of substantial power amplification of the narrow-band emission from a cw dye laser.     

A study on the control of dye solution temperature on the line-width and wavelength stability of a copper vapour laser pumped single mode dye laser

This paper presents a study on the line-width and wavelength stability of a single mode narrow line-width (≈ 100 MHz) dye laser pumped by a copper vapour laser, with and without precision temperature control of dye solution. The single mode dye laser system was based on a specially designed SS metal dye cell and grazing incidence grating (GIG) dye resonator with intra-cavity double prism beam expander and etalon. A high precision wavelength-meter was used to record the line-width and frequency stability data. With the coarse dye solution temperature control of 23 ± 2 °C, dye laser line-width varied in a periodic fashion (in every 30 s) between 100 and 770 MHz. Frequency stability was ± 215 MHz (1 min). This is attributed to switching from single to double mode due to temperature induced cavity length change. For the precise dye solution control of 23 ± 0.1 °C, the periodic variation of the line-width was removed completely and the line-width was always ≤ 100 MHz. The frequency stability also improved to ± 42 MHz (1 min). It is established that the dye temperature control is very crucial for achieving, highly frequency stable single axial mode operation.     

Passive mode-locking in flashlamp-pumped dye lasers

Passive mode-locking in flashlamp-pumped dye lasers is investigated employing a theoretical model presented previously. It is shown that under typical experimental conditions, the flashlamp-pumped dye laser can be operated in the quasi-continuous regime where the output pulses are close to being steady-state pulses (SSP). Numerical results concerning the build-up process of the SSP are generally in good agreement with experimental observations.     

Intrapulse thermally induced wavelength shift in a distributed feedback dye laser

It is shown that when a distributed feedback dye laser is used to generate a train of picosecond pulses, the narrow lines observed in the spectrum are not longitudinal modes, but are due to the intrapulse refractive index changes caused by the heating effect of the pumping pulse.     

Bistability in wavelength using an electro-optically tuned dye laser

Bistability in wavelength is demonstrated using a Rh 6 G dye laser tuned electro-optically with an intra-cavity modulator. Laser emission occurs on two wavelengths that can be switched between them by a change in the level of light input. Multistable mode is also possible. The characteristics of the system are discussed. They show that the discrimination between the two wavelengths attached to the stable states can be performed easily. Further prospects deal with bulk systems operating with low driving voltages.     

Water-soluble coumarin dyes for flashlamp-pumped dye lasers

New coumarin derivatives have been prepared that are soluble in water, a solvent with superior thermo-optical properties. The new dyes, flashlamp-pumped, lase with high effeciency between 450 and 520 nm (untuned).     

Precise wavelength tuning of a dye laser using an active diffractive optical element

In this work, an active, reflecting diffraction grating was developed and characterized. A grating was holographically imposed onto the surface of a ceramic which could be deformed via the transverse, inverse piezoelectric effect, thus allowing active fine tuning of the grating constant. The tuning characteristics of this novel optical element were studied and the results compared with the linear theory of the piezoelectric effect. To demonstrate its applicability, the grating was installed in a dye laser and used to effect precise tuning of the output wavelength of the laser within a range of 220 pm. The possibility of quasi-static to high frequency operation of the system will allow this element to find use in a wide variety of applications.     

Fast frequency control of a cw dye jet laser

For frequency stabilization of a cw dye laser a very fast reacting piezo mirror translator with 350 kHz lowest resonance frequency has been developed. If it is driven by appropriate control electronics it allows to suppress efficiently fast frequency changes of the jet stream dye laser. The remaining frequency jitter is 270 kHz rms for full-bandwidth detection; it drops to a few kHz if a filter time constant of 100 μs is used.     

Generation of synchronised ultrashort pulses using a dual wavelength synchronously mode-locked CW dye laser

The properties of a dual wavelength synchronously mode-locked cw dye laser are described. Results are presented which show that good mode-locking is obtainable under dual wavelength conditions. Cross-correlation measurements indicate that the time separation of the pulses depends on gain saturation within the dye.