Polymer dye lasers with exceptional performance

Presented here are experimental results of polymer dye lasers with various active elements that had different optical surface quality. We investigated these active elements with diamond-turned and conventionally polished surfaces, uncoated and AR coated. Sol gel AR coatings were spin-applied to polymer surfaces resulting in less than 0.25%/surface reflection losses. Excellent refractive index matching coupled with low stress and high optical damage threshold, makes this AR coating ideal for this applications. Sol gel coatings are highly repeatable and easily tailored to these polymer materials. These elements were pumped by a Q-switched, frequency doubled Nd:YAG laser with pulse energies up to 760 mJ, pulsed width of 5 - 7 ns.