FY 1980 report on dye laser materials

Ten commercially available rhodamine dyes have been examined for their stability in dye lasers. Except for rhodamine 101 and sulforhodamine 101, the output of the dye laser showed a time dependence in addition to the dependence upon total input energy per unit volume; i.e., these latter dyes showed a 'recovery' in laser output upon standing overnight. Unfortunately, the recovered solution shows a faster decay than would the original dye solution. Sulforhodamine 101 showed the highest dye laser lifetime parameters, followed by rhodamine 3B. Little difference was observed in the lifetime of the remaining dyes. The unsubstituted amines showed the lowest lasing outputs, highest laser thresholds, and the bluest laser emission of the ten dyes.