Pulsed Nd:YAG laser utilizing a flowing dye cell

Optical distortion in a repetitively pulsed, passively mode-locked Nd:YAG laser system, resulting from laser-pulsed heating of the liquid dye, has degraded the amplitude uniformity of the output pulse trains at repetition rates greater than 1 pps. This correspondence describes a Nd:YAG system in which a flowing mode-locking dye cell is used. The effect of flowing the dye is to remove the thermally distorted volume of liquid before the incidence of the next pulse train. This procedure has resulted in pulse trains of uniform amplitude at rates limited only by the power supply, i.e., 20 pps.