Pulsed operation of lasers refers to any laser not classified as continuous wave, so that the optical power appears in pulses of some duration at some repetition rate.[1] This encompasses a wide range of technologies addressing a number of different motivations. Some lasers are pulsed simply because they cannot be run in continuous mode.
In other cases the application requires the production of pulses having as large an energy as possible. Since the pulse energy is equal to the average power divided by the repetition rate, this goal can sometimes be satisfied by lowering the rate of pulses so that more energy can be built up in between pulses. In laser ablation for example, a small volume of material at the surface of a work piece can be evaporated if it is heated in a very short time, whereas supplying the energy gradually would allow for the heat to be absorbed into the bulk of the piece, never attaining a sufficiently high temperature at a particular point.
Other applications rely on the peak pulse power (rather than the energy in the pulse), especially in order to obtain nonlinear optical effects. For a given pulse energy, this requires creating pulses of the shortest possible duration utilizing techniques such as Q-switching.
The optical bandwidth of a pulse cannot be narrower than the reciprocal of the pulse width. In the case of extremely short pulses, that implies lasing over a considerable bandwidth, quite contrary to the very narrow bandwidths typical of continuous wave (CW) lasers. The lasing medium in some dye lasers and vibronic solid-state lasers produces optical gain over a wide bandwidth, making a laser possible which can thus generate pulses of light as short as a few femtoseconds.
^Silfvast, William T. (1996). Laser Fundamentals, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55617-1
Pulsed operation of lasers refers to any laser not classified as continuous wave, so that the optical power appears in pulses of some duration at some...
Pulsedlaser deposition (PLD) is a physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique where a high-power pulsedlaser beam is focused inside a vacuum chamber to...
that is itself pulsed, either through electronic charging in the case of flash lamps, or another laser that is already pulsed. Pulsed pumping was historically...
lasers and pulsedlasers. The dye rhodamine 6G, for example, can be tuned from 635 nm (orangish-red) to 560 nm (greenish-yellow), and produce pulses as...
laser ablation refers to removing material with a pulsedlaser, but it is possible to ablate material with a continuous wave laser beam if the laser intensity...
or liquid surface at high velocities by laser ablation by a pulsedlaser. Depending on the laser flux and pulse duration, the material can be simply heated...
An ultrashort pulselaser is a laser that emits ultrashort pulses of light, generally of the order of femtoseconds to one picosecond. They are also known...
prevent retina damage. Nd:YAG lasers can operate in both pulsed and continuous mode, but the other types are limited to pulsed mode. The original and still...
A laser microjet is a water-jet-guided laser in which a pulsedlaser beam is coupled into a low-pressure water jet. This is used to perform laser cutting...
conditions caused by lasers at different wavelengths, not including injuries due to pulsedlasers. The skin is usually much less sensitive to laser light than the...
tunable dye lasers, mainly to excite laser dyes emitting in the blue-green region of the spectrum. These lasers are also commonly used in pulsedlaser deposition...
Laser medicine is the use of lasers in medical diagnosis, treatments, or therapies, such as laser photodynamic therapy, photorejuvenation, and laser surgery...
modern-day laser peening began in the early 1960s as pulsed-laser technology began to proliferate around the world. In an early investigation of the laser interaction...
object. The most common form of laser rangefinder operates on the time of flight principle by sending a laserpulse in a narrow beam towards the object...
Pulsed energy projectile or PEP is a technology of non-lethal weaponry. The U.S. military is developing PEP using an invisible laserpulse which ablates...
Ultrafast laser spectroscopy is a category of spectroscopic techniques using ultrashort pulselasers for the study of dynamics on extremely short time...
a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration, on the order of picoseconds (10−12 s) or femtoseconds (10−15 s). A laser operated...
lasers—ultraviolet, visible, infrared, continuous wave, pulsed, high-power, low-power—there is an assortment of instrumentation for measuring laser beam...
layer in the 2nd generation superconducting wires can also be grown by pulsedlaser deposition (PLD). Christen provides an overview of the PLD process used...
turbulence, wind veer, and wind shear data. Both pulsed and continuous wave systems are being used. Pulsed systems use signal timing to obtain vertical distance...
for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics. The first working laser (a pulsed ruby laser) was demonstrated on May 16, 1960, by Theodore...
frequency AC electrical engineering the electromagnetic fields from a pulsedlaser can be sufficient to induce this effect, causing damaging structural...
portraits with ruby lasers, in sizes up to a meter square. Because of its high pulsed power and good coherence length, the red 694 nm laser light is preferred...
Global Information