Narrow Linewidth Operation of a Pulsed Grazing-incidence Dye Laser

Abstract

Abstract We have designed and tested a pulsed single-mode dye laser for use as the master oscillator in a laser isotope separation (LIS) system. The design features a grazing incidence, or Littman type, cavity which is pumped at a repetition rate of up to 6 kHz by a copper vapour laser to produce a single-mode nearly diffraction-limited beam at over 1% efficiency. Operating on the dye Rhodamine B the laser can be tuned over the range 570–590 nm of interest for LIS.