Demonstration of a nine lines distributed feedback dye laser using three pairs of pump beams

Abstract

Controllable, maximum nine-wavelength operation of a wavefront divided, multiple beam pumped, distributed feedback dye laser (DFB), is reported for the first time. Equally spaced three to nine lines have been obtained by pumping a dye solution with three pairs of excitation beams derived from the same source. Experimental results lead to a nine line model of a distributed feedback dye laser (DFDL). The dye cell was excited by the 2nd harmonic of a laboratory built, cavity dumped, passively q switched and mode-locked Nd : YAG laser, to induce a temperature phase grating in the dye solution. Different features studied included threshold conditions, simultaneous induction of multiple gratings, impact of pump polarizations, and temporal and spectral characteristics of the emitted lines. This work on the DFDL is in agreement with most of the published results on semiconductor DFB lasers [1, 2, 3] and opens a new era of research. This multi-wavelength operation of a DFDL is based on the nonlinear effects of an overwritten multiple dynamic grating on a R6G dye solution in ethanol.