A high-power tunable Raman fiber ring laser for the investigation of singlet oxygen production from direct laser excitation around 1270 nm

We report on the development of a tunable Raman fiber ring laser especially designed for the investigation of the (3)Sigma(-)(g) -> (1)Delta(g) transition of molecular oxygen. Singlet oxygen ((1)Delta(g)) is a reactive species of importance in the fields of biology, photochemistry, and phototherapy. Tunability of the Raman fiber ring laser is achieved without the use of an intracavity tunable bandpass filter and the laser thus achieves a slope efficiency only obtained up to now in Perot-Fabry cavities. A measurement of the action spectrum of a singlet oxygen trap is made in air-saturated ethanol and acetone to demonstrate the practical application of the tunable Raman fiber ring laser for the investigation of the (3)Sigma(-)(g) -> (1)Delta(g) transition of molecular oxygen. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America