Kinetics of the operation of a distributed-feedback dye laser with nanosecond excitation

An experimental investigation was made of the conditions for the generation of ultrashort pulses in a dye laser with light-induced distributed feedback. Experiments involving excitation of this laser with single-frequency and multifrequency radiation in the form of the second harmonic of an YAG:Nd³⁺ laser showed that in all these cases the ultrashort pulses were generated in the distributed-feedback laser by excitation of relaxation oscillations of the level populations and self-Q switching of the laser caused by such excitation