Organic solid-state narrow-linewidth tunable dye laser oscillator
A solid-state dye laser (SSDL) is a
solid-state laser
A solid-state laser is a laser that uses a active laser medium, gain medium that is a solid, rather than a liquid as in dye lasers or a gas as in gas lasers. Semiconductor-based lasers are also in the solid state, but are generally considered as ...
s in which the gain medium is a
laser dye
file:Coherent 899 dye laser.jpg, Close-up of a table-top dye laser using Rhodamine 6G as active medium.
file:rhodamine 6G.svg, Molecular structure of Rhodamine 6G, perhaps the best known laser dye.
A Laser dye is a dye used as laser medium in a dy ...
-doped organic matrix such as
poly(methyl methacrylate)
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is a synthetic polymer derived from methyl methacrylate. It is a transparent thermoplastic, used as an engineering plastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and bran ...
(PMMA), rather than a liquid solution of the dye. These lasers are also referred to as ''solid-state organic lasers'' and ''solid-state dye-doped polymer lasers''.
SSDLs were introduced in 1967 by Soffer and McFarland.
Organic gain media
In the 1990s, new forms of improved PMMA, such as modified PMMA, with high optical quality characteristics were introduced. Gain media research for SSDL has been rather active in the 21st century, and various new dye-doped solid-state organic matrices have been discovered. Notable among these new gain media are organic-inorganic dye-doped polymer-nanoparticle composites.
An additional form of organic-inorganic dye-doped solid-state laser gain media are the
ORMOSILs.
High performance solid-state dye laser oscillators
This improved gain medium was central to the demonstration of the first tunable narrow-linewidth solid-state dye
laser oscillators, by
Duarte,
which were later optimized to deliver pulse emission in the kW regime in nearly diffraction limited beams with single-longitudinal-mode
laser linewidth
Laser linewidth is the spectral linewidth of a laser beam.
Two of the most distinctive characteristics of laser emission are spatial coherence and spectral coherence. While spatial coherence is related to the beam divergence of the laser, spec ...
s of
≈ 350 MHz (or
≈ 0.0004 nm, at a laser wavelength of 590 nm).
These tunable laser oscillators use
multiple-prism grating architectures yielding very high intracavity dispersions that can be nicely quantified using the
multiple-prism grating equations.
Distributed feedback and waveguide solid-state dye lasers
Additional developments in solid-state dye lasers were demonstrated with the introduction of
distributed feedback laser designs in 1999 and distributed feedback waveguides in 2002.
See also
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Laser linewidth
Laser linewidth is the spectral linewidth of a laser beam.
Two of the most distinctive characteristics of laser emission are spatial coherence and spectral coherence. While spatial coherence is related to the beam divergence of the laser, spec ...
*
Organic laser
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Organic photonics
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Tunable laser
A tunable laser is a laser whose wavelength of operation can be altered in a controlled manner. While all active laser medium, laser gain media allow small shifts in output wavelength, only a few types of lasers allow continuous tuning over a sign ...
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Multiple-prism grating laser oscillator
Multiple-prism grating laser oscillators, F. J. Duarte, Narrow-linewidth pulsed dye laser oscillators, in ''Dye Laser Principles'' (Academic, New York, 1990) Chapter 4. or MPG laser oscillators, use multiple-prism beam expansion to illuminate a d ...
References
{{solid-state laser
Solid-state lasers