Characterizing laser dye performance

摘要

Several measures of laser performance are investigated for a generic dye laser operating under conditions where the input energy is limited by a maximum value and the output is required to be above some minimum value. Dimensionless expressions are developed that show the interrelationships between the efficiency, the number of laser pulses for a unit volume of dye solution, and the total laser output per volume of dye solution. For one of the performance measures, the total laser output per unit volume of dye solution, the initial slope efficiency divided by a parameter characteristic of the degradation process,k0/c, is identified as a reasonable figure of merit. It is readily evaluated from experimental degradation data and has reasonably simple properties relative to transfer between laser systems.