Nilesh J. VASA,¹ Kouki MORISHITA,¹ Husayin PARHAT,¹ Tatsuo OKADA,¹ Mitsuo MAEDA¹ and Osamu UCHINO²

¹ Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University, Hakozaki, Fukuoka, 812-81 Japan, ² Meteorological Research Institute, 1-1 Nagamine, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305 Japan

(Received September 30, 1996; Accepted November 8, 1996)

Spectrally pure high-power tunable single-mode operation of a pulsed Ti³⁺:sapphire laser by a tunable injection-seeding is reported. The injection laser was a cw diode laser pumped, spectrally narrowed tunable Cr³⁺:LiSrAlF₆ (Cr³⁺:LiSAF) laser with a grating in the auxiliary cavity. Single-mode tunable operation of a pulsed Ti³⁺:sapphire ring oscillator was obtained at different wavelengths in the range between 818 nm and 848 nm with a typical linewidth of 0.006 cm^-1. To extend the applicability of this operation to a differential absorption lidar system, the single-mode Ti³⁺:sapphire oscillator output was amplified and a high energy output of 38 mJ was obtained with the same linewidth.

Key words : solid-state laser, tunable laser, injection seeding, Ti³⁺:sapphire laser, Cr³⁺:LiSrAlF₆ laser, laser radar