Intracavity absorption with a continuous wave dye laser: quantification for a narrowband absorber

Abstract

Although it is recognized as a very sensitive detection technique, the general application of intracavity absorption to areas such as chemical kinetics and photochemistry has been somewhat limited. Concerns are frequently expressed about the nonlinear nature, experimental difficulty, and reliability of the technique. To allay some of these objections, the dependence of intracavity absorption on factors such as transition strength, concentration, absorber path length, and pump power has been investigated experimentally for a cw dye laser with a narrowband absorber (NO(2)). For this case a Beer-Lambert type relationship has been confirmed over a useful range of these parameters. The extent of intracavity absorption was quantitatively measured directly from the dye laser spectral profiles and, when compared to extracavity measurements, indicated enhancements as high as 12,000 for pump powers near lasing threshold. By defining an intracavity absorption coefficient, it was possible to demonstrate the reliability of the method by obtaining accurate transition strength ratios.