An oscillator-amplifier distributed feedback dye laser system, pumped by a single TEA N laser.

In this paper we describe a simple and inexpensive Distributed Feedback Dye Laser (DFDL) system for picosecond pulse generation. This system consists of an oscillator-amplifier DFDL, either in the grating or in the prism configuration: both stages are pumped by a single TEA nitrogen laser with improved beam quality. Single pulses having duration of 26 ps are obtained at a frequency up to 100Hz; the overall pulse-to-pulse stability is, at the maximum frequency, of about 25%. This system is particularly well-suited for time-resolved fluorescence microscopy studies where short tunable laser pulses of low energy are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]