Design and construction of a tunable pulsed Ti:sapphire laser

Abstract In this paper, design and construction of a tunable pulsed Ti:sapphire laser and numerical solution of the corresponding rate equations are reported. Rate equations for a four-level system are written and their numerical solution is examined. Furthermore, an optical setup is introduced. In this setup, a Ti:sapphire crystal is longitudinally pumped by the second harmonics of a Q-Switched Nd:YAG laser, and a prism is used as a wavelengthselective element as well. This setup is established for two 10 and 50 % transmission output couplers. In case of using the 10 % coupler, the output energy of the laser, for the pump energy of 36 mJ, is pulses with 3.5 mJ energy and for the 50 % coupler, with 50 mJ of pump energy, pulses with 10 mJ energy are generated. A wavelength tuning range of more than 160 nm is possible. The repetition rate of this laser is 10 Hz and the temporal duration of the pulses is about 30 ns.