Dye Laser for Red through Yellow Wavelengths?
Green and Blue are generally produced by either a multiline argon ion laser (though a DPSS laser is often replacing the power hungry ion laser for green at least). However, getting high power red requires either a krypton ion (or mixed gas) laser or very expensive DPSS laser. Even the largest HeNe laser (SP-125, multimode if one exists) won’t break the 200 mW barrier and it’s very difficult and costly to get decent beam quality from a red diode laser. Orange and yellow are at least as much of a problem. So, what about pumping a dye laser with an argon ion laser?: (From: Steve Roberts (osteven@akrobiz.com).) As an example, a Coherent 930 medical system uses a modified I90 tube with a CR599 three mirror dye head. Threshold for the dye from the factory docs with fresh R6G, fresh optics, and a good tweak, is 1.5 watts all lines from the argon, lasing at a few milliwatts tuned at 640 nm. Note that the power is only about 40 mW at 2.5 watts pump, reaching a max of 3.2 watts with 9 watts pump