Dye laser

A laser that uses an organic dye as its gain medium. Its broad emission spectrum enables wavelength tuning across much of the visible range and into nearby ultraviolet or infrared regions.

Laser gain medium: A material that amplifies light through stimulated emission in a laser. The dye is the amplifying material whose molecular transitions produce laser light.
Laser spectroscopy: The study of matter using the wavelength, intensity, or timing of laser light interacting with it. Tuning across absorption features lets dye lasers probe atomic and molecular spectra.
Organic dye: An organic compound that absorbs visible or ultraviolet light and often has a characteristic color. Dye molecules supply the electronic transitions that form the laser's gain band.
Ti:sapphire laser: A tunable solid-state laser that uses titanium-doped sapphire as its gain medium. Both offer broad tunability, but Ti:sapphire avoids circulating liquid dye.
Stimulated emission: The emission of a photon triggered by an incoming photon, producing a matching photon. Excited dye molecules amplify light by emitting photons stimulated by photons already in the beam.
Resonance ionization spectroscopy: A technique that selectively ionizes atoms through resonant laser excitation before detecting the resulting ions. Tunable dye lasers can match the narrow transitions needed for element-selective ionization.
Singlet state: An electronic state in which paired electron spins give the molecule total spin zero. Excitation into fluorescent singlet states supports rapid gain in many dye molecules.
Optical parametric oscillator: A device that converts pump light into tunable output through nonlinear optical interactions in a crystal. It provides tunability without relying on the dye's molecular fluorescence band.
Fluorescence: Light emitted by a substance after it absorbs electromagnetic radiation, typically at a longer wavelength. Fluorescence reveals the dye's broad emission band that makes wavelength tuning possible.
Fluorescence microscopy: Microscopy that forms images from light emitted by fluorescent labels or structures in a sample. Pulsed dye lasers have served as excitation sources for fluorescence imaging.

Linked from 2 pages

Gas laserCompared with: Dye lasers offer broad tunability where many gas lasers emit at discrete characteristic lines.