Dye laser pumping with femtosecond laser

[mixedgas]

My femtosecond system is down for two weeks while waiting on a replacement module. If it were up, I'd just try it.
I'd have to run the pump beam into a doubler first, we use near and mid IR Ti-Saph. Our lab has a metric ton of leftover dyes, this is one problem I could answer quickly.

Depending on your dye laser's cavity length, you might get self modelocking or other nasties.

If your Femto laser pumps in the middle of the dye laser's adsorption band, you've got a good shot, provided your focus into the medium is not so sharp.
Ie use a linear focus from a cylindrical lens, not focus to a point.

What whacks me out about the internet is the huge amount of dis-information out there, which leads people to do things that won't work. Things like using 445 nm diode lasers to try to pump dyes that only adsorp in the green etc. However, this question is one that we will actually have to try, to answer it well.

OK, I let my fingers do the walking on Sci-Finder Scholar. The answer is yes, a few groups have pumped dye with compressed pulses. They end up with lengthened, but very sharp, dye laser pulses. The pulses are short, so the average energy is low, and they tend to self modelock, as expected. They get decent tuning, on the order of 250 nm range with a green pump:
There are a FEW, and I mean just a FEW papers on the subject:

See:
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Tunable femtosecond dye laser synchronously pumped by the compressed second harmonic of Nd:YAG

A. M. Johnson and W. M. Simpson »View Author Affiliations

JOSA B, Vol. 2, Issue 4, pp. 619-625 (1985)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOSAB.2.000619
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Steve

[Hispano]

Steve,
Thank you for your answer.

]use a linear focus from a cylindrical lens, not focus to a point

Yes, it is exactly what I was planing to do.

The paper is really useful, though their goal was to get pulses as short as possible, while mine is to narrow the bandwidth (off course pulses will become longer, but it is not critical for me). But at least now I know that it is possible, now I will try to figure out how practical it is for me.

[ArcDevilz]

Keep us posted Alex. and welcome to Photonlexicon.

[planters]

The paper is really useful, though their goal was to get pulses as short as possible, while mine is to narrow the bandwidth

There are straight forward ways to narrow the bandwidth such as an inter cavity echelon and compressed pulse pumping is probably counterproductive. But, enough. Just try this and let us know.

[mixedgas]

For narrowing the bandwidth, use a Hansch cavity with a reflective grating at one end in Littrow configuartion. You up-collimate the beam with a intracavity telescope to force it to use more of the grating area. Dr Hansch earned a Nobel prize with this configuration, so you know it works.

Dr. Hansch's dye laser papers are a joy to read..

You can also look at T. F. Gallagher's paper, which adds a "tracking mirror" to the grating for a further factor of 3 reduction in linewidth.

First I'd just get it super-radiant and then lasing off the dye cell walls.


Steve

[dsli_jon]

he said...I have a "filling" that this will not work. That did not help either.

Creo que este Señor se habla Español, porque este sono como 'acento' de Español, al Ingles..

Bienvenidos al 'hogar' de lo mas locos por la luz del laser, que tiene todo el Internet.. ay, el Universo, creo!
Exito...
j

[planters]

I try hard to ignore that temptation because I would find it so difficult to routinely post in a second language.

[ArcDevilz]

Let me guess... Ebonics?

I try hard to ignore that temptation because I would find it so difficult to routinely post in a second language.