High power efficient dye amplifier pumped by copper vapor lasers

Author

Hargrove, Steven R. ; Kan, Tehmau

Author_Institution

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, University of California, Livermore, CA, USA

Volume

16

Issue

10

fYear

1980

fDate

10/1/1980 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1108

Lastpage

1113

Abstract

An extensive study has been performed on a dye amplifier pumped by copper vapor lasers. The amplifier utilizes a transverse pumping configuration in which the dye flow, pump beam, and dye extraction beam are mutually orthogonal. The operating characteristics of the amplifier have been studied using four dye-solvent systems which span the wavelength range continuously from 560 to 690 nm. Optimum conversion efficiencies of 18-30 percent at output powers of 0.41-0.76 W have been measured from the four dyes at a 6 kHz pulse repetition rate. The efficiencies and output powers were limited only by the available copper laser pump power. Analytic expressions have been obtained for the amplifier power gain and efficiency using a rate equation treatment of the system dynamics. Excellent agreement is obtained between the predicted and measured amplifier gain characteristics for rhodamine 6G.

Keywords

Dye lasers; Laser amplifiers; Copper; High power amplifiers; Laser beams; Laser excitation; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Power lasers; Pulse amplifiers; Pulse measurements; Pump lasers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.1980.1070370

Filename

1070370