Teaching laser principles with nitrogen laser pumped dye lasers

Nitrogen laser pumped dye lasers are useful aids to the understanding of the principles of lasers and also as tools for advanced undergraduate physics and chemistry laboratories. We have developed laboratory exercises that allow the students to develop necessary skills and study important principles. The students construct their own narrow linewidth dye lasers in a step-by-step process. First amplified spontaneous emission is studied and compared with broadband lasing. A grating is added to provide linewidth narrowing and tunability. The dependence of the threshold pump power on losses is examined. Dyes are studied including the dependence of the emission wavelength on concentration. Finally, the transition from the Littrow configuration to grazing incidence is made thereby illustrating the narrowing of the linewidth with an increase in the number of grating grooves.