Spark versus lamp pumping of dye laser?
Then there is the question of pumping with an air-spark, which has been raised by several people. That can certainly work. The lowest threshold I think I’ve ever heard of was something on the order of 5 mJ into the “lamp”, which suggests that if you want to use something like the circuit that drives a TEA nitrogen laser, a structure that stores relatively small amounts of energy, a spark may be a good bet. The trick, I guess, is twofold: 1) keeping the spark confined to a straight line, and 2) getting as much of the light as possible from the spark into the dye.
