A self-quenching picosecond distributed feedback dye laser pumped by a picosecond laser pulse

A tunable single short pulse laser system with a transform–limited bandwidth pumped by a picosecond Nd:YAG laser (ca. 120 ps pulse width) is demonstrated. With this configuration, the relaxation oscillations coming from a distributed feedback dye laser cavity are completely removed. Because the pumping pulsewidth is shorter than the lifetime of dye molecule on the upper laser state, the gain of the laser medium is depleted by the first pulse. The laser wavelength could be precisely tuned with the transform-limited bandwidth (for example, a linewidth of 0.02 nm). After amplification, we obtain a single short laser pulse energy up to 500 μJ at the pulsewidth of 8.2 ps.