Abstract

Dye jets are used as gain media and saturable absorber switches in passively and hybridly mode-locked dye lasers. These jets are located at focal spots of these cavities. One would expect these plane, parallel elements to play a negligible role as optical clement in the cavity, first, because their optical thickness (typically' 0.1 mm) is much smaller than the confocal parameter of the beam. Next, being located near or at a beam waist, an eventual lensing effect would make a minimal contribution to the cavity stability condition.

© 1992 Optical Society of America