A modular, reconfigurable-cavity, pulsed dye laser for the advanced undergraduate laboratory Available to Purchase

The modular pulsed dye laser described is extremely easy to build, is quickly reconfigurable into different laser cavity designs, and is usable for experiments in spectroscopy. The laser can be constructed with readily available optical components and simple hand tools. This laser is designed primarily to illustrate the performance differences of three different dye laser cavity designs: the Littrow grating (Hänsch) cavity, and both the single- and double-grating grazing incidence cavities. In the double-grating configuration, the laser’s linewidth of 0.007 nm is on the order of ten times narrower than many commercially available pulsed dye lasers. Thus the laser also has excellent performance as a spectroscopic tool. Construction, typical performance, and application details are described.