Abstract

The fluctuations present in the output of a picosecond laser represent an important point of consideration when the utility of the system for picosecond spectroscopy is to be judged. For instance, in excite-and-probe spectroscopy with two synchronously mode-locked dye lasers driven by a common pump source the temporal jitter of the pulses is of primary concern. We present quantitative data on three different types of fluctuations in a Rhodamine 6G dye laser synchronously mode locked by an argon-ion laser: (a) energy fluctuations, (b) temporal jitter, and (c) fluctuations of the pulse width.

© 1984 Optical Society of America