Comparison of prism-expander and grazing-incidence grating cavities for copper laser pumped dye lasers

Operating characteristics of a variety of rhodamine 590 dye laser oscillators transversely pumped by a pulsed copper bromide laser at low repetition rates are reported and compared. The cavities investigated include simple prism-expander and grazing-incidence grating arrangements as well as double-prism and prism preexpanded grazing-incidence grating configurations. Linewidths of ~0.01 A at energy conversion efficiencies up to 10% were obtained for a prism preexpanded grazing-incidence grating cavity with good beam quality and low background superluminescence (<0.01%).