Abstract. The ground-state bleaching of highly concentrated rhodamine 6G solutions in methanol is studied with intense picosecond light pulses. The ground-state recovery time changes with concentration from about 3.9 ns at low concentration (10~5 mol/dm 3 ) to about 1 ps at high concentration (0.6 mol/dm 3 ). The shortening of the absorption recovery time is determined by the concentration dependent quenching of the S 1 -state population due to unbound dimers and by the intensity dependent longitudinal and transverse amplified spontaneous emission. 42.65, 42.70, 42.20 The bleaching of absorbing media by intense light pulses is a general phenomenon. The only requirement for reduction of absorption with increasing light signal is that the ground-state absorption cross-section is larger than the excited-state absorption cross-section [1][2][3][4][5]. For laser pulse durations At L short compared to the absorption recovery time z A the bleaching behavior is determined by the input pulse energy density e [6]. At a pulse energy density s s = hv L /