Broadband coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy with a modeless dye laser

We develop a modeless dye laser for broadband coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) and investigate the operational characteristics of the modeless laser. The energy efficiency of the modeless laser is 6%, and the beam divergence is 0.65 mrad. We construct a compact movable CARS system with the modeless laser and a graphite tube furnace to assess the accuracy of the CARS temperature. It is found that the difference between the averaged CARS temperature and the radiation temperature measured with an optical pyrometer is <2% at a temperature range from 1000 to 2400 K. We also measure the averaged CARS temperature drift owing to the variation of the spectral distribution of the modeless laser, which is <1.5% during 5 h of operation. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.