Study of the polarization characteristics of stimulated emission in organic dyes

Thesis/Dissertation · Mon Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1979

OSTI ID:5431678

Reyzer, K C

This work is a comprehensive analysis of the polarization characteristics of stimulated emission in laser pumped organic dyes. This is the first treatment of dye laser polarization effects to use the semiclassical density matrix formalism where the pump is considered a coherent interaction. Included in this approach are an arbitrary distribution of transition moments, saturation effects of the dye laser field, birefringence of the active medium due to operation away from line center, and rotational diffusion introduced by the Brownian motion of the molecules in solution. It has been shown theoretically that the polarization states of both the pump and the signal fields in a dye laser amplifier can be altered depending on the initial conditions of the optical fields. Among the results are the fact that the polarization of the signal field tends to rotate toward the pump field, while with heavy saturation the pump field itself rotates away from the signal. In a dye laser oscillator, the output can be polarized in several different ways that depend on the initial conditions of the pump field and the resonator. Several possible applications are discussed including opto-optic modulators, improved dye laser pumping efficiency, polarization selectability in dye lasers, and indirect measurement of the rotational diffusion time of a molecule in solution.

• OSTI ID: 5431678
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
420300* -- Engineering-- Lasers-- (-1989)
DYE LASERS
EMISSION
ENERGY-LEVEL TRANSITIONS
LASERS
LIQUID LASERS
OPTICAL PUMPING
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
POLARIZATION
PUMPING
STIMULATED EMISSION