Generation of tunable picosecond pulses in a simple distributed feedback dye laser under N2-laser pumping

Simple possibility of single tunable picosecond pulse generation in a conventional inexpensive distributed feedback dye laser (DFDL) is demonstrated. It is shown that when a TEA N2-laser is used for pumping no diffraction grating is necessary in the DFDL optical scheme for operation in the picosecond regime. Hence wide-range spectral tuning from 357 to 665 nm was easily achieved. When pumped with a 0.6 ns 40 kW pulse of the TEA N2-laser the DFDL generated pulses as short as 7 ps with time-bandwidth product better than 0.6 and a peak power of about 10 kW. At a repetition rate of 50 pps, the shot-to-shot energy stability of a single picosecond pulse was plus or minus 18 percent at plus or minus 7 percent stability of the TEA N2-laser. (Author)