Spectral narrowing and electro-optical tuning of a pulsed dye laser by injection locking to a cw dye laser

Abstract

It is shown that the single-element electro-optical birefringent filter can be used to tune the relatively high-gained flashlamp-pumped pulsed dye laser across the entire dye emission band, but the resulting laser line width is relatively wide as might be expected. However, this line width could be drastically reduced without losing the tunability by injection locking the pulsed laser to an electro-optically tuned cw dye laser. The beam direction, collimation, spectral width, and stability of the pulsed laser can, therefore, all be precisely controlled through the cw laser beam.