Powerful single-frequency ring dye laser spanning the visible spectrum

Abstract

With an improved water-base dye solvent and 24-W all-lines pumping from an argon laser, we have generated 5.6 W of stabilized single-frequency output from a ring laser in rhodamine 6G dye. With this solvent, a mixture of ammonyx-LO and ethylene glycol chilled to 10°C, thermal distortion of the jet no longer limits the dye laser output power, and the tuning curves reported here are all limited by available pump input levels. This single-frequency system has been optimized over the entire visible spectrum (407–887 nm), and results for the eleven best dyes are presented.