Picosecond pulses from mode-locked dye lasers

Invited Review Article: Technology for Attosecond Science

“…127 This technique draws analogy with a conventional streak camera used to measure laser pulses with picoseconds duration. 128 In conventional streaking measurements the pulse under examination impinges on a photocathode releasing a photoelectron bunch that temporally replicates the laser pulse. The photoelectrons are subsequently streaked (deflected) by a time-varying electric field (microwave frequency) that directly maps time to spatial position on a fluorescent screen.…”

Generation and measurement of frequency-tunable picosecond pulses from dye lasers

“…While subpicosecond pulses were first obtained from dye lasers optically pumped by mode-locked ruby [1,2], or the second harmonic of mode-locked neodymium:glass lasers [3,4], the shortest pulses are produced by passively mode-locked systems [5]. By employing powerful linear air flashlamps to pump Rhodamine 6G, and immersing one laser cavity mirror in the saturable absorber solution, 100 ~o modulated pulse trains were first achieved [6] in a passively mode-locked dye laser.…”

“…By employing powerful linear air flashlamps to pump Rhodamine 6G, and immersing one laser cavity mirror in the saturable absorber solution, 100 ~o modulated pulse trains were first achieved [6] in a passively mode-locked dye laser. Frequency tuning was obtained by replacing one of the laser mirrors by a rotatable diffraction grating, employed in auto-collimation, and two-photon fluorescence (TPF) measurements showed [5,7] that pulse durations of ~5 ps could be reliably produced.…”

Mode-locked semiconductor lasers and their spectroscopic applications

“…The dominance of the organic dye laser in present-day spectroscopy is based upon the relative ease with which the wide homogeneously broadened fluorescence emissions of lasing dyes can be manipulated to produce tunable narrow-line or coherent ultra-short laser pulse outputs. After the initial experiments in producing narrow-band (Bradley et al 1968 a, b) and ultrashort pulse (Schmidt & Schafer 1968;Bradley & O 'Neill 1969) dye laser modes of operation, these systems were quickly applied to atomic spectroscopy (Mcllrath 1969;Bradley et al 1970a) and to the investigation of coherent pulse propagation in resonance materials employing an electro-optical ultra-fast streak camera (Bradley et al 1970 A). Over the next decade there followed rapid and intensive development of instrumentation and techniques for high-resolution laser spectroscopy, and the flowering of this field can be seen in the work reported at this Discussion Meeting.…”