An analysis of turbulence in the dye medium of a high-repetition-rate narrowband dye laser is presented, and it is shown that the output bandwidth is proportional to the turbulence length scale, which depends on the Reynolds number. The length scale and the bandwidth both first decrease and then increase as the Reynolds number is increased from -200 to -20,000. The observed bandwidth, as we report and as in the published literature, confirms the validity of the analysis. A Rhodamine 6G grazing-incidence grating, stable dye laser transversely pumped by a copper-vapor laser was used in the experiments.

The design requirements of a high-stability narrowband dye laser with a curved dye cell, pumped by a copper vapor laser, are discussed. The design is simple and easy to fabricate at low cost. It is shown that the curved dye-cell geometry, with hydraulic diameter varying from 23 to 1 mm and curvature ratio varying from 1 to 81, creates flow conditions that meet the requirements of a stable narrowband tunable dye laser. It is shown numerically that the eddy sizes, temperature fluctuations, and associated energies in boundary layer are responsible for the fluctuations in the output. A dye laser based on this geometry was operated from Reynolds number 184 to 1100. The numerical results agree with the experimental results showing better dye laser stability at higher Reynolds number.

The paper presents the design and performance of a transversely pumped, narrow bandwidth, high wavelength stability tunable dye laser that neither uses low expansion coefficient materials for construction nor incorporates any active control on the wavelength or the dye solution and environmental temperature as generally used in such lasers. The scheme essentially involves designing the mechanical assembly in such a way that, when bolted together it forms a massive monoblock, enclosing all the optical components and the dye laser axis within itself. This ensures the environmental temperature changes can only affect the output characteristics over long time scale. Short term (pulse to pulse) fluctuations in wavelengths and bandwidths, generally associated with the dye flow instabilities, were minimized by using a specially designed a dye cell made of a near 360°-curved rectangular duct, in which the turbulent flow is transformed itself into laminar flow as it reaches the dye laser axis. The laser was operated with Rhodamine 6G-ethanol-ethylene glycol solution, pumped by a copper vapor laser operating at 5.6 kHz. The dye laser output, consisting of three axial modes, separated by about 990 MHz, was stable over the observation period of about 90 min. Maximum long term (>1 h) fluctuation in Δν/ν was about ±3.6×10−6. The bandwidth of the individual mode varied between 245 MHz to 315 MHz.

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