Narrowband operation of a pulsed dye laser without intracavity beam expansion

A new simple cavity design for nitrogen-laser-pumped dye lasers is presented. Narrowband operation is achieved with a single dispersive element and without any intracavity beam expansion. The dispersive element is a diffraction grating used near grazing incidence with an additional mirror, instead of the usual Littrow arrangement. The large angular dispersion obtained results in a linewidth of 0.08 cm−1. The typical peak power obtained is 4 kW with 50 kW in the pump beam. Calculations of linewidth based on single-pass estimates are presented and are found to be in good agreement with experimental results.