The effect of varying the hydraulic parameters of a flow cell in a dye laser pumped by a copper vapor laser

A simple method for measuring hydrodynamic parameters that influence the copper vapor laser (CVL) pumped dye laser stability is reported. A specially designed converging diverging curved flow duct is employed. The flow gap at the laser pump region is varied from 0.4 to 0.6 mm and the Reynolds number is varied from 1000 to 20,000. As a result, the channel aspect ratio and effective curvature ratio are varied from 41.6 to 62.5, and 69 to 102, respectively, at the CVL pump region. The variation in the intensity of a He-Ne laser beam transmitted through the water flowing in the test dye cell at different flow rates correlated with the numerically estimated hydrodynamic parameters. The impacts of these hydrodynamic parameters on a 5.5 kHz CVL pumped dye laser output are discussed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.