Dye lasers pumped by radiation from high-power semiconductor lasers

Dye lasers were pumped for the first time with radiation from high-power CdS and ZnO semiconductor lasers. The latter lasers were pumped by a beam of 350 keV electrons of 150 A/cm² current density in the form of pulses of 25 nsec duration. Use was made of multicomponent semiconductor targets up to 50 mm in diameter. A special optical system was developed for focusing radiation in a dye cell. The efficiencies of conversion of the pump radiation into the dye laser radiation were 50% for the rhodamine 6G–CdS pair (when the output energy per pulse was 50 mJ) and 10% for the coumarin 47–ZnO pair.