Wideband tuning of a XeCl laser-pumped dye-doped sol-gel silica laser

Doped and undoped silica slabs were fabricated using the sol-gel technique. Extended UV transmission was observed for HCl-catalysed sol-gel silica. Under transverse pumping by a XeCl laser, narrowband (<0.9 nm) laser oscillation from rhodamine perchlorate (R640)-doped silica slabs was achieved in an echelle grating resonator cavity. Tuning of the R640 silica laser extended from 627 nm to 670 nm.<
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