10 ps High Power Laser System at 248 nm

A simple 10 ps KrF laser system consisting of quenched dye laser oscillator pumped by a XeCl laser, a distributed feedback dye laser (DFDL), a three-stage dye amplifier and a two-stage KrF amplifier are described. The output of the laser system is 140 mJ with 10 ps pulse width by using polarization-multiplexing amplification. A focused output laser intensity of about 4×1015 W/cm2 is obtained. The saturation fluence for KrF laser is obtained with this laser.     

用于ps脉冲放大的大口径放电泵浦KrF激光器

 以简单的火花间隙作为放电开关，建立了一种用于ps脉冲激光放大的大口径放电泵浦KrF准分子激光器。该激光器的有效增益口径截面为4cm×3cm，在自由运转情况下最大激光输出能量为1.3J，脉宽20ns。用作ps放大器时，利用光学偏振放大方式获得了激光能量140mJ，脉冲宽度10ps的激光输出。利用XeCl激光泵浦的染料激光作为探针测量了不同放电条件下和不同气分比条件下激光的增益和吸收系数。     

Generation of tunable subnanosecond laser pulses with a nitrogen laser pumped dye laser amplifier system

A simple method for generating single tunable subnanosecond dye laser pulses is described. A Rhodamin 6G dye laser is transversely pumped by a subnanosecond UV pulse of a TEA nitrogen laser. The narrowband output of the dye laser is amplified and shortened in a synchronously pumped amplifier. Narrowband pulses with a duration of 30–40 ps (fwhm) and a pulse power of 30 kW are obtained. They are tunable over the range of 580–600 nm.     

Single picosecond UV pulse generation by mode-locking of an excimer laser-pumped dye laser

A single picosecond ultraviolet pulse has been generated based on mode-locking of a dye laser pumped by a long pulse XeCl laser to serve as the input source for a high-power ps KrF laser system. A short-pulse uv dye laser (BBQ) pumped by an additional XeCl laser was used to selectively amplify a single pulse from a mode-locked pulse train with the pulse separation of 3.2 ns. The amplified single pulse was frequency-doubled to 248 nm with the pulse duration of 20 ps.     

Efficient amplification of sub-picosecond pulses of a non-CW dye laser

Efficient amplification in a dye laser amplifier is investigated theoretically and experimentally. A five-level rate equation approach is considered including rotational relaxation of the dye molecules. The effects of the pump pulse duration and of the parameters of the input pulse are discussed. The results are compared with experimental data for 0.5 ps pulses of a pulsed dye laser. Conversion efficiencies >10% are achieved for a single pass amplifier using Nd:YAG pump pulses of 2 ns while an effective fluorescence lifetime of 1.7±0.2 ns is determined for the gain medium rhodamine 6G. The triple pass amplifier stage of the laser system achieves an energy conversion of 4% with 40 J output pulses.     

KrF laser picosecond pulse source by stimulated scattering processes

A new short-pulse KrF laser source was developed by combining stimulated scattering processes, namely, Raman, Brillouin, and four-wave-mixing (FWM). Short pulses of 1.1 ps were obtained from 4 ns oscillator output. Only two commercial discharge KrF lasers are required for this system. This method is very simple and could be extended to an ArF laser wavelength in principle.     

Picosecond laser system with 30-W average power via cavity dumping and amplifying

We present a picosecond laser system with high energy by technologies of cavity dumping and amplifying. Firstly, pulses with 10 ps and ～520 nJ were obtained by cavity-dumped mode-locked laser at 10 kHz repetition rate. Secondly those pulses were seeded into a side-pumped regenerative amplifier (RA). Then pulses output from the regenerative amplifier were amplified by two four-pass post amplifiers. From the laser system pulses with an average power of 30 W corresponding to 3 mJ pulse energy were achieved with the pulse-width of 25.4 ps at repetition rate of 10 kHz.     

超短脉冲分布反馈染料激光器稳定工作条件分析

 利用耦合波理论,分析了一种作为KrF准分子激光MOPA系统的振荡源-亚皮秒超短脉冲分布反馈染料激光器（DFDL）的输出模式,指出实际的分布反馈染料激光器工作在单纵模状态是周期性增益调制的必然结果。数值模拟结果表明,DFDL输出光谱出现多条谱线的精细结构或调制现象,这是由多个顺序相干脉冲产生的。可以利用这种光谱调制现象来控制激光器的泵浦强度,获得稳定的单脉冲。光谱测量结果表明,在2倍泵浦阈值左右DFDL能够获得稳定的单模单脉冲输出。     

电子束泵浦KrF激光器进行超短脉冲的单束放大实验研究

电子束泵浦KrF激光器口径大、泵浦率高 ,可直接用于进行超短脉冲激光的放大。用天光一号电子束泵浦KrF激光器进行超短脉冲激光放大 ,将超短脉冲激光放大到 2～ 3J、1.2 ps,激光功率达到 2TW。测量了石英窗镜中的非线性吸收系数和超短脉冲激光脉宽的变化     

Output and picosecond amplification characteristics of an efficient and high-power discharge excimer laser

Improvements in output pulse energy and efficiency of a conventional capacitor-transfer-type discharge excimer laser with automatic preionization have been achieved by extending the discharge volume and resulting moderate pumping of the active medium. The discharge laser produces a pulse energy of more than 1 J for XeCl, KrF, and ArF lasers in square beams of about 2×2 cm², and the maximum overall efficiency observed is 2.9% for XeCl, 3.2% for KrF and 1.8% for ArF. The laser device has been involved in a picosecond ( 32 ps) XeCl laser amplification system, and was operated as an amplifier at a repetitive frequency of 10 Hz. Saturation fluence for XeCl laser was measured to be 1.4 mJ/cm², and the picosecond pulse energy of 40 mJ was extracted from the amplifier.On leave from Ebara Corp., 6-6-7, Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104, JapanOn leave from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, LTD., 4-6-22, Kan-on shinmachi, Nishi-ku, Hiroshima 733, Japan     

Dual picosecond dye lasers synchronously pumped by a mode locked cw yag laser

The performance of a novel dual dye laser system synchronously pumped by the frequency doubled output of a mode-locked CW-YAG laser is evaluated in relation to pulsewidth, pulse substructure, pulse spectral width and timing jitter. The behavior of the system is adequately described by a theoretical model which includes the time dependent gain and losses due to frequency bandwidth, cavity length mismatch and output coupler. The jitter is significantly reduced from that obtained with CW gas laser pumping as a result of the shorter pump pulse (50 ns instead of ≈100 ps). A routine operating condition uses 2-plate birefringen filters, 0.8 W pump power at 532 nm, to yield two 2.0 ps pulses having a cross correlation width of 3.8 ps, and 30 mW average power from each laser.     

A frequency doubled pressure-tunable oscillator—amplifier dye laser system

A tunable, high repitition rate oscillator—amplifier dye laser system is reported. The dye laser described was longitudinally pumped with the second harmonic of a Nd—Yag laser operating at 10 Hz. Using three Fabry-Perot etalons and pressure tuning, a maximum fundamental output power of ?6 MW with a corresponding spectral width of less than 0.003 nm at 564 nm was obtained. The fundamental at 564 nm was frequency doubled to give a maximum power level of 0.6 MW of second harmonic output power with a spectral width of less than 0.0015 nm at 282 nm. Frequency stability could be maintained to within ?15% of the line-width.     

Synchronously pumped femtosecond dye oscillator-amplifier system at 815 nm

A tunable dye oscillator-amplifier system that produces 0.25 mJ, 105 fs pulses at 815 nm is demonstrated. The system consists of a synchronously pumped femtosecond dye laser followed by a dye amplifier that is quasi-longitudinally pumped using the frequency-doubled output from a Nd:YAG regenerative amplifier.     

Generation,stabilization, and amplification of subpicosecond pulses

A sync-pumped cw dye laser system has been used to produce subpicosecond pulses. Pulses as short as 0.7 ps, assuming a single-sided exponential pulse shape, were observed. A set of experiments was performed to investigate the origin and effects of noise in the sync-pumped system. A digital and an analog feedback loop have been designed to optimize the pulse width. The noise has been lowered by 10 dB for frequencies up to 10 kHz; long-term drift is also controlled by this method. A four-stage dye laser amplifier, pumped by a Nd:YAG laser which operates at a 10-Hz repetition rate, is synchronized electronically to the dye-laser picosecond pulses. A gain of 3×10⁶ has been achieved.This work was supported by the Joint Services Electronics Program     

Concept and numerical investigation of an ultrafast high-contrast high-power KrF laser system

The concept of an all-excimer ultrafast high-power UV laser system implementing the KrF excimer medium both in the oscillator and in the amplifiers is presented. The system includes a short-pulse (10^-11–10^-10s) KrF oscillator employing fast pulse period Q-switching or truncated Brillouin scattering and a multipass KrF amplifier with a multilayer saturable absorber applied as a highly effective pulse compressor. By means of computer simulations, it is shown that the system, incorporating currently available KrF discharge modules and acridine dye as the saturable absorber, is capable of generating high-contrast pico-or subpicosecond pulses of near terawatt power level.     

Generation of short-pulse VUV and XUV radiation

Starting from intense short-pulse KrF (248 nm, 25 mJ, 400 fs), ArF (193 nm, 10 mJ, 1 ps), and Ti:sapphire (810 nm, 100 mJ, 150 fs) laser systems, schemes for the generation of fixed-frequency and tunable VUV and XUV radiation by nonlinear optical techniques are investigated. With the KrF system, a four-wave mixing process in xenon yields tunable radiation in the range of 130–200 nm with output energies of, so far, 100 J in less than 1 ps. For the XUV spectral range below 100 nm, nonperturbative high-order harmonic generation and frequency mixing processes in noble gas jets are considered. To achieve tunability, the intense fixed-frequency pump laser radiation is mixed with less intense but broadly tunable radiation from short-pulse dye lasers or optical parametric generator-amplifier systems. In this way, tunability down to wavelengths of less than 40 nm has been demonstrated.     

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.     

Transient behaviour of pulsed dye lasers

Some aspects of the transient behaviour of pulsed dye lasers are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. Relaxation oscillations induced in the output from a dye cell by an external reflector have been observed and explained, using a rate equation approximation to the physical situation in the dye cell. These oscillations are shown to play an important part in the generation of short laser pulses from long cavity dye lasers. Finally, it is proposed that 10 ps pulses can be obtained from conventional dye lasers pumped by 100 ps pulses from a high-pressure nitrogen laser.     

Powerful dye laser oscillator-amplifier system for high resolution and coherent pulse spectroscopy

A peak power output of 100 kW in the visible at a linewidth as low as 60 MHz has been generated by using a cw dye laser oscillator followed by three single pass dye amplifier stages (or one double pass stage and one single pass stage), pumped by a single 1 MW nitrogen laser. The very high output power obtained in this laser system may be used to produce coherent ultraviolet pulses by sum or second harmonic generation in non-linear crystals or by third order mixing in atomic vapor.     

300 Femtosecond pulses at 497 nanometer generated by an excimer laser pumped cascade of distributed feedback dye lasers

The setup is a cascade of 3 lasers: A competing cavity dye laser pumped by a XeCl excimer laser, followed by two distributed feedback dye lasers. The typical durations of the pulses from the lasers are 100 ps, 5 ps, and 300 fs, respectively. The output pulses at 497 nm are amplified up to 500 MW. The shortest pulse duration obtained was 198 fs.