7 - Liquid and solid-state tunable organic dye lasers for medical applications

Abstract

Organic dye lasers have the distinct privilege of being the first broadly tunable lasers. This broad tunability, directly in the visible spectrum, made the dye laser a pioneer in a plethora of revolutionary laser applications from fundamental physics to astronomy. Further, the liquid state of its gain media made it possible to demonstrate laser oscillation at high average powers, and with unsurpassed high-energy single pulse generation, in the visible spectrum. This chapter highlights high-performance dye lasers in the liquid state as well as high-performance solid-state organic dye lasers. Emphasis is given to laser characteristics and laser physics–technology aspects of high-efficiency narrow-linewidth tunable laser oscillators.