Chirp control of a single-mode, good beam quality, zigzag dye laser

We report a substantial reduction of frequency chirp of a single-mode laser-pumped zigzag dye laser. A linear optical cavity using counterpropagating orthogonally polarized waves was injection-seeded at 568 mn and operated with a laser output of about 1 J. The chirp was controlled by an intracavity Pockels cell that was configured to add optical density at a rate which counterbalanced the decrease in optical density due to dye-solvent heating during the /spl sim/1-/spl mu/s laser pulse. Heterodyne measurements were used to determine that the bandwidth was near the transform limit and chirp rate of /spl sim/1 MHz//spl mu/s. The beam quality of the laser was measured at 10 Hz as 1.7 XDL.