Photodissociation dye laser

The photodissociation dye laser (PDL) program is an effort to develop a new class of tunable liquid lasers operating in the visible region of the spectrum. In the PDL scheme, laser action occurs between an excited electronic state and the ground electronic state of radicals produced by the photodissociation of specific classes of molecules in solution. Five promising PDL molecules have been synthesized and their absorption spectra characterized. A pulsed tunable UV source has been assembled to investigate their fluorescence characteristics. Hexaphenylethane has been identified as the most promising PDL candidate for an initial study. Triphenylmethyl radical fluorescence has been observed in the hexaphenylethane system.