Passive mode locking of an energy transfer continuous-wave dye laser

The first passive mode locking of a continuous-wave energy transfer dye laser is reported. Using an argon ion laser-pumped mixture of rhodamine 6G and sulphur rhodamine 101 as the active medium, pulses of less than 500 fs duration have been generated over the spectral range 652-694 nm using two different saturable absorbers in a simple linear cavity without dispersion optimization. Pulses as short as 120 fs have been measured using standard second-harmonic generation autocorrelation techniques.