High power dye lasers

This report discusses the development of a high average power, flashlamp pumped dye laser. This program has resulted in the development of a dye laser with a power output of 102 watts at a repetition rate of 250 Hz. This was made possible by the development of a vortex stabilized flashlamp that can be operated at high average power and high repetition rate. The report discusses the properties of the flashlamp in detail and describes two laser configurations that were tested, a longitudinal dye flow laser and a transverse dye flow laser. A pulse compression scheme to obtain a high time resolution with a long laser pulse is presented and some preliminary experiments are described.