Flashlamp pumped color center lasers

Abstract Flashlamp pumped tunable operation of F A (II) and F B (II) center lasers is reported. Threshold pump energies as low as 400 mJ, output energies of nearly 70 mJ and an efficiency of 0.1% have been achieved. The width of the emission spectrum of initially 70 GHz with a Littrow grating tuner was reduced to 1.5 GHz using a grazing incidence grating configuration. The scalability of the system is discussed.