Possibility of generating frequency-tunable visible and ultraviolet picosecond light pulses

Tunable picosecond laser pulses of 1–2 MW power and 10–30 cm^–1 line width were generated in the 330–700 nm range by pair summation, in a nonlinear crystal, of all the frequencies in a continuous spectrum 800–1000 cm^–1 wide. The necessary continuous spectrum was separated from a wide-band continuum excited in D₂O by picosecond pulses from a neodymium-glass laser. This method was found to be very promising for generating tunable ultraviolet lines in the 200–250 nm range because it could ensure an energy conversion coefficient of ~10^–4–10³.