Picosecond laser with passive mode locking and an average power of 1.1 W

A single-jet linear cw dye laser is described. Its active medium is rhodamine 6G with the addition of a saturable absorber in the form of crystal violet. Stable generation of picosecond bandwidth-limited pulses with an average power of 1.1 W was observed when the laser was pumped with multiline cw radiation from an argon layer of 9.5 W power.