Travelling-Wave Pumped Ultrashort Pulse Distributed Feedback Dye Laser

Abstract

Distributed feedback dye lasers (DFDLs) are convenient sources of wavelength tunable transform limited picosecond laser pulses [1]. Single pulses are obtained by proper choice of the pumping power [2,3]. As we have shown earlier, the duration of the pulses from a standing wave DFDL can be as short as 2 ps when pumped by 16 ps long pulses [4]. The shortest pulse in this case is limited by the transit time of light through the DFDL. It should, however, be possible to overcome this limitation by travelling wave pumping. We have recently introduced this concept experimentally and demonstrated that considerable shortening of a generated ASE pulse with respect to the pump pulse can be achieved in this way [5].