Versatile Dye Laser Generator-Amplifier System for Intense Tunable Picosecond Pulse Generation

Abstract. Passively mode-locked ruby-laser pulses are used to generate nearly diffraction-limited picosecond light pulses in a dye cell by longitudinally amplified spontaneous emission. The output pulses are amplified in three longitudinally pumped dye cells, then spectrally filtered with a grating spectrometer and finally reamplified in a fourth dye amplifier in order to generate intense frequency tunable picosecond light pulses. PACS: 42.55M, 42.60 Various pulsed dye laser systems are available for tunable picosecond pulse generation [1, 2]. Flash-lamp pumped mode-locked dye lasers [3], synchron-ously pumped lasers [4], short-cavity resonators [5], quenched transient lasers [6], distributed feedback lasers [7], and amplified spontaneous emission sys-tems [8] have been investigated. The arrangements applying amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) may be grouped into longitudinall