High-peak-power 532-nm pumped dye laser

A dye laser, pumped by the second harmonic of a flash-pumped
Q
-switched Nd:YAG oscillator/amplifier chain is described. The dye laser produces 8-ns-long pulses with energies as great as 140 mJ and peak powers of 20 MW. At a repetition rate of 10 pulses/s, the average power obtained is 1.4 W and the conversion efficiency (532 nm to dye) is approximately 50 percent.