section_path: Types and operating principles/Dye lasers
section_name: Dye lasers
paragraph_text: Dye lasers
  
  Dye lasers use an organic dye as the gain medium. The wide gain spectrum of available dyes, or mixtures of dyes, allows these lasers to be highly tunable, or to produce very short-duration pulses (on the order of a few femtoseconds). Although these tunable lasers are mainly known in their liquid form, researchers have also demonstrated narrow-linewidth tunable emission in dispersive oscillator configurations incorporating solid-state dye gain media. In their most prevalent form, these solid-state dye lasers use dye-doped polymers as laser media.
  
  Bubble lasers are dye lasers that use a bubble as the optical resonator. Whispering gallery modes in the bubble produce an output spectrum composed of hundreds of evenly spaced peaks; a frequency comb. The spacing of the whispering gallery modes is directly related to the bubble circumference, allowing bubble lasers to be used as highly sensitive pressure sensors.