This Research Initiation Award describes an investigation into dye laser and diode laser amplifiers for ultrashort pulses such as those emitted from mode-locked dye lasers and gain switched diode lasers. The goal in this end, this start-up program will be governed by careful experiments and detailed theoretical modelling. Of particular interest will be issues of maximizing total gain and efficiency, polarization dependences, gain switching dynamics in media with mixed line broadening, and very high repetition rate amplification. From a practical standpoint the study of dye lasers and diode lasers has impact on applications in photonics and ultrafast nonlinear optics.
