Page 20 - Tunable Lasers Handbook

1 Introduction 3

from discretely tunable lasers are listed in Table 3 of Chapter 5. The information
provided in these tables indicates that broadly tunable sources of coherent radia-
tion span the electromagnetic spectrum from -300 nm to -1 mm. Excimer lasers
offer limited tunability in regions further into the ultraviolet around 193 and 248
nrn. The tuning ranges quoted for ArF and KrF lasers are -17,000 GHz and
-10,500 GHz [24], respectively. An exception among excimer lasers is the XeF
laser with its C+A transition, which has demonstrated broadly tunable emission
in the 466- to 512-nm range [25]. In Table 3 of Chapter 5 bandwidth and tuning
range information is included for a variety of discretely tunable lasers including
excimer, N,, HgBr, and Cu lasers. Wavelength information on line-tunable cw
lasers such as Ar+ and the Kr+ lasers is included in Table 11 of Chapter 5. Ener-
getic and power characteristics of some tunable sources of coherent radiation are
listed in Table 3 of this chapter. Although the title of this book refers specifically
to tunable [users, sources that do not involve population inversion in their gener-
ation of coherent radiation are included. This approach is justified because the
issue under consideration is the generation of tunable coherent radiation, which
is precisely what OPOs perform.
In the area of ultrashort-pulse generation, dye lasers have demonstrated
17 fs using intracavity pulse compression [36] and 6 fs using further extra

TABLE 3 Energy and Power Characteristics from Broadly Tunable Sources of
Coherent Radiation

Source Pulse regime cw regime

Energy0 Power. Powera
Dye lasers 400 Jh [26] 2.5 kW at 13.2 !dIzc [27] 43 Wd [28]
Ti?+:AI,O, laser 6.5 Jb,e [29] 5.5 W at 6.5 kHz( [30] 43 Wdf[32]
220 W at 110 Hzb [31]
Cr3+:BeAI2O4 laser >lo0 Jh [33] 6.5 Ws [34]
OPOS
BBO >lo0 mJ [16]
LrnO, 10 mW [35]
FELS - GW levels in short pulses [I71
UThese values may represent the best published performance in this category.
hUnder flashlamp excitation.
Under copper-vapor-laser (CVL) excitation.
dUnder AI? laser excitation.
eUses laser dye transfer in the excitation.
fliquid-nitrogen cooled.
wUnder Hg-lamp excitation.