Temporally coincident ultrashort pulses from synchronously pumped tunable dye lasers

The temporal and spectral character of the picosecond pulses from a dye laser which was synchronously pumped by a frequency-doubled mode-locked Nd:glass laser was studied with an ultrafast streak camera. For matched pump and dye laser cavity lengths, the observed dye pulses were of 15-psec duration and were in very close temporal synchronism with the pump pulses. For deviations from match >0.1 mm, severe aberrations in pulse character began to occur. Spectral tuning of the dye laser was achieved with a narrow-gap etalon. The utility of such lasers in producing two independently tunable time-synchronized ultrashort pulses for parametric frequency generation and spectroscopic studies is discussed.