Powerful single-frequency ring dye laser spanning the visible spectrum

With an improved water-base dye solvent and 24-W all-lines pumping from an argon laser, we have generated 5.6 W of stabilized single-frequency output from a ring laser in rhodamine 6G dye. With this solvent, a mixture of ammonyx-LO and ethylene glycol chilled to 10 degrees C, thermal distortion of the jet no longer limits the dye laser output power, and the tuning curves reported here are all limited by available pump input levels. This single-frequency system has been optimized over the entire visible spectrum (407-887 nm), and results for the eleven best dyes are presented.