Characteristics of a cascaded grating multi wavelength dye laser

Characteristics of a multi wavelength dye laser in two cascaded grating resonator configurations are presented. DCM dye dissolved in ethanol, was transversely pumped by second harmonic of Nd:YAG laser and four wavelength, independently tunable, collinear dye laser operation was obtained in Cascaded Grazing Incidence Grating cavity (CGIG) and Hybrid CGIG with fourth grating in Littrow angle (HCGIG) configuration. Gain competition effect of all the sub-cavities was fully characterized and wavelength zones of operation were identified for each cavity for sustaining four wavelength operation. Overall efficiency of the oscillator was measured to be around 2% in CGIG and 7% in HCGIG.