Highly photo-stable, kHz-repetition-rate, diode pumped circulation-free liquid dye laser with thermal lens management

TL;DR

This paper introduces a compact, low-cost, diode-pumped liquid dye laser with exceptional photo-stability and thermal lens management, capable of high repetition rates up to 14 kHz, surpassing solid-state laser stability.

Contribution

The development of a sealed, circulation-free dye laser system that achieves unprecedented photo-stability and high repetition rates through thermal lens correction.

Findings

Photo-stability up to 1.2 x 10^9 pulses over 12 days

Repetition rate can be increased to 14 kHz with thermal lens correction

Thermal effects limit repetition rate more than triplet population effects

Abstract

Liquid dye lasers have long been considered as ideal tunable laser sources in the visible range but are bulky, expensive, and require a complex system for dye circulation. Here, we present a system that relies on a low-cost blue laser diode as the pump source and a sealed dye cell with no flowing circuitry, resulting in a device that combines the convenience and size of a solid-state device with the stability of a liquid organic laser. A very high photo-stability is obtained (up to 1.2 x 10$^9$ pulses or 12 days at 1 kHz), which is five orders of magnitude higher than a solid-state dye laser operated in similar conditions. The number of pulses obtainable at low repetition rates is found to be limited by molecular self-diffusion and, hence, related to the total cuvette volume. In contrast, the repetition rate is limited to a few kHz, which suggests that thermal effects play a bigger role than triplet population effects. Thermal effects participate in the suppression of lasing through the buildup of a strong negative thermal lens; correcting the non-aberrant part of this thermal lens by resonator design enables the repetition rate to be pushed up to 14 kHz with possible further optimization. This work shows a route for building off-the-shelf, compact, low-cost, and convenient tunable pulsed lasers in the visible range that have superior stability over organic solid-state lasers.