Abstract

Numerous commercial applications exist for compact, lightweight, inexpensive, coherent light sources in the entire visible spectrum. Diode lasers are used for SHG in cavities or for multiple photon pumping of rare earth ion doped solid state materials involving single photon absorption. To my knowledge, this is the first report on pure multiphoton pumped upconverted lasers called MU-lasers. The low absorption cross section of multiphoton interaction is compensated by a suitable propagation of the pump beam through low loss dye doped polymer waveguides, allowing long propagation lengths with high intensities for efficient conversion. Two photon absorption of an IR (740 nm) beam in certain dye doped polymer waveguides produce upconverted light centered at ~572 nm with a bandwidth of ~80 nm. A probable model is an efficient excited state energy transfer (S₂ → T₂) and subsequent upconverted fluorescence from T₂ →T_1′ although excited state complex formations cannot be ruled out. Waveguide lasers for upconverting diode laser wavelengths, integrated ultrafast visible lasers, and visible displays are some of the typical application areas.

© 1992 Optical Society of America