Measurement of the Excited State Absorption Cross Section in Ruby at 6943a and 300k

摘要

The excited state absorption cross section from the metastable state in ruby at the ruby laser wavelength and at 300K was experimentally determined. An indirect method was used, which involved the measurement of the times to laser threshold on four high quality ruby rods. A second experiment was then performed to measure the chromium ion population remaining in the ground state at each of these times. The ground state population was obtained by measuring the increase in intensity of 4100A probe light transmitted through the pumped ruby sample. An upper limit on the value for the cross section was obtained which is in agreement with that obtained by Kiang et.al. of 0.3 x 10 to the -20th power sq. cm. However, the conclusion was reached that thermally induced scattering had a small influencing effect, which reduced the final result to an average value of 0.17 plus or minus .06 x 10 to the -20th power sq. cm for the four ruby samples. (Author)