Laser dye stability. Part 2

Abstract

The lifetime of a laser dye solvent system is experimentally shown to increase with increased energy per excitation flash. By measuring the variation in laser output with differing input energies, it is shown that degradation constants can be determined. These degradation constants can be used to give the laser output as a quadratic function, a degradation equation, involving the input energy per flash and the total input energy per unit volume as independent variables. This degradation equation, in turn, can be reduced to a relationship between the half-life and the input energy per flash. The half-life for a given input energy per flash is found to approach an upper limit which can be derived using the degradation constants. The effects upon a laser dye system lifetime of varying the concentration of the dye and mirror reflectivity are discussed. Experimental evidence is presented showing that these two parameters do not affect the upper limit half-life for coumarin 1 in ethanol.