Pulsed Dye Laser

[danielbriggs]

Fascinating work Eric.
Keep it up.

[Eidetic]

Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto!

That's what you say to prevent a robot from freakin' out, but do you know what to say to stop him once he's started?

[VDX]

... hmmm -- you get me interested ... I have one working N2 TAE laser from around 1980, which gives 200ps short pulses with max. 400kW of power at 337nm and max. 30Hz repetition rate.

What would be the simplest setup and dye to test it?

Viktor

[Fearless]

That's what you say to prevent a robot from freakin' out, but do you know what to say to stop him once he's started?

RUN! Gort! Deglet ovrosco!

[swamidog]

why on earth would you want to stop him??!

That's what you say to prevent a robot from freakin' out, but do you know what to say to stop him once he's started?

[planters]

What would be the simplest setup and dye to test it?

I thought about doing this as well. It depends on how good a result you want. If you place the right dye in a cuvette and use a cylinder lens to focus the nitrogen pulse into a long thin line within the dye you can get a superluminescent laser beam out of the cell without any optics and without any dye flow. The result is terribly divergent and will have a low conversion efficiency. For a much better result, I would use a spherical lens to focus the nitrogen laser down to a spot. I would slowly flow the dye through a cell using a gravity siphon. You can fabricate a good cell from quartz microscope slides, separated by thin metal strips into a 75mm long 10mm wide and approximately 1mm thick cell. Place two plano-plano cavity mirrors on either side of this cell and bring the converging nitrogen beam in from the edge of one of the cavity mirrors to a focus on the central cell (this is the same layout that Laserscope uses). The output coupler will work with any reflection coefficient greater than 50%. Rhodamine RG-6 would be my first choice. Dissolve it in 50:50 water methanol to between, 1x 10 minus 3 and minus 5 molar concentration.and do not use COT or ammonyx.

[turbohead]

Great video and equally impressive Variac! Thank you!

[planters]

Thanks a lot. At 240V and 50A it just matches my circuit!

[VDX]

... now only to find the time beside my other (more urgent) laser projects

Viktor

[planters]

More urgent projects?...More urgent projects? That's what I would like to see more of. I make these videos to teach and to update the audience about some of my more interesting projects. It would be nice if some other experimenters/builders produced some reviews. I'd really enjoy it.