Broadly Tunable, Repetitive Picosecond Laser System and Its Application to Spectroscopy

A broadly tunable, repetitive picosecond laser system utilizing the optical parametric effect has been developed for the purpose of studying picosecond spectroscopy. It is possible to produce intense, monochromatic light pulses having 30–40ps duration and a tunable range from 240nm to 3.6μm with a repetition rate as high as 20pps. In a previous paper [1], the construction of an optical parametric oscillator was reported, in which a temperature-controlled LiNbO3 crystal is pumped by the second harmonic of a mode-locked glass:Nd laser with one-shot operation. The same parametric oscillator is used in this paper changing the pumping source to a mode-locked YAG:Nd laser with repetitive operation. To demonstrate the usefulness of this tunable picosecond laser system, results of experiments on the two-photon resonant Raman scattering and luminescence processes associated with excitonic molecules in CuCl are also presented in this paper.