Organic Dye Laser Pumped by Flashlamp

The project intends to construct a lamp-pumped prototype organic dye laser which can be used to check some parameters initially in a simple design.

A commercial capacitor and a commercial spark gap switch are used in the preliminary design. Since Xenon is the most efficient emitter in the wavelength regions of interest for pumping organic dyes, this machine will almost use a commercial flashlamp. With a Xenon-filled flashlamp, the reasonably required high optical pump power can be obtained. Under optimum circumstances, Xenon lamps can have efficiency as high as 50% or more. By driving the lamp with a short electrical pulse, high pump power is also obtained.

The design of the circuit consists of a capacitor connected to the flashlamp by a spark gap which serves as a switch. The other end of the flashlamp is connected to the other end of the grounded capacitor. The rapid formation of a good conduction channel when the gap is triggered is encouraged by a small capacitor across the spark gap. The anode end of the flashlamp is connected to ground via large-value high-voltage resistor in order for the small capacitor gets recharged between pulses.

Read more