Narrow-band infrared picosecond pulses tunable between 1.2 and 1.4 µm generated by a traveling-wave dye laser

A novel type of picosecond light source is the traveling-wave dye laser. It consists of a generator and an amplifier cell, both pumped by single pulses. Using the fast switching dye No. 5 with a fluorescence quantum efficiency of
5 \times 10^{-4}
, one obtains an energy conversion of the pump to the IR pulse of up to 10 percent. The spectral width of the IR pulses is 15 cm
^-1
over the tunability range of
1.18-1.4 \mu
m. At 1.33 μm we observe Gaussian shaped pulses of 4.4 ps duration for pump pulses of 4.5 ps generated by a mode-locked Nd:glass laser. The output pulses show a high stability with a jitter of less than 0.2 ps.