We report on a solid-state laser structure functioning as the organic counterpart of a vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) design. The gain medium is a poly(methyl methacrylate) film doped with Rhodamine 640, spin casted onto the high-reflectivity mirror of a plano-concave resonator. Upon pumping by 7 ns pulses at 532 nm, a diffraction-limited beam (M(2)=1) was obtained, wi...

A general expression is derived for a Fabry-Perot spectrometer when one or more of the functions entering into its description lack the inherent radial symmetry of the fringe pattern about the etalon optical axis. Calculations of the effects of these asymmetric functions applicable to densitometry of photographic fringe records and vidicon scanning of fringe patterns are given. The theory is al...

We report the first demonstration to our knowledge of broadly tunable, single-frequency operation of a cw Cr:YAG laser. Single-frequency operation was obtained from 1332 to 1554 nm with a maximum output power of 680 mW generated at 1457 nm with 10% conversion efficiency of 1047-nm pump laser radiation. A traveling-wave ring resonator was forced to operate unidirectionally by use of Faraday rota...

We show that plane-wave singly resonant optical parametric oscillators exhibit a temporal modulation instability when pumped a certain number of times above threshold. Previously, this instability threshold was predicted, with a model neglecting variations in pump power, to occur at around 4.61 times oscillation threshold. We consider here the full self-consistent interaction between pump, sign...

The Flare Genesis Experiment consists of an cm balloon borne Ritchey Chr etien telescope which will provide spatial reso lution vector magnetograms Wavelength and polarization state selection are accomplished respectively with a lithium niobate Fabry Perot etalon and a liquid crystal modulator This paper describes recent modi ca tions to the experiment mainly to the optics and to the pointing s...

A study of the surface modification induced by single femtosecond laser pulses in phosphate glass has revealed surface swelling at fluences just below the ablation threshold. This behavior is different from that observed in other dielectric materials. Optical micrographs obtained with monochromatic light show a pattern of Newton rings within the swollen region whose number scales inversely with...

A ZnGeP>(2) (ZGP) optical parametric oscillator (OPO) with wide mid-IR tunability has been demonstrated. The singly resonant angle-tuned ZGP OPO was pumped by 100-ns erbium laser pulses at lambda =2.93mum and yielded output that was continuously tunable from 3.8 to 12.4 mum (type I phase matching) and from 4 to 10 mum (type II phase matching). An OPO pump threshold was less than 1 mJ in the who...

Material measurement standard etalons are widely recognized as critical for accurate measurements in any field. The absence of standard etalons in software measurement is having a negative impact on software engineers when they come to use measurement results in decision-making. To verify measurement results and ensure unambiguous comparability across contexts, researchers in software measureme...

Introduction Recent progress in transmission capacity of dense wavelength-division multiplexed (DWDM) signals in a trunk optical fiber line now allows transmission of data beyond 10 Tbit/s over more than 100 km [1], [2]. The DWDM technology has to be applied to future millimeter-wave fiber-radio systems in order to take the capability to deal with the large amount of data capacity. There have b...