Picosecond transverse-flow flashlamp-pumped dye laser

The paper presents the results of work undertaken to develop an easily tunable picosecond laser providing single pulses with sufficient energy, repetition rates, and quality mode-locking reproducibility to characterize emission spectra, depolarization, and lifetimes in chemical samples with emission quantum yields as low as 10 to the -5. Attention is given to the laser head electronics design, whole train and single-pulse autocorrelation and spectra, pulse energies, repetition rate performance, and tuning ranges for mode locking of rhodamine 590 with DODCI. Finally, it is noted that strategems for optimizing flashlamp lifetimes prove to be critically important in high-power dye lasers, and considerations of power supply design and flashlamp selection are summarized.