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.