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Transient Laser Behavior

  • Chapter
Principles of Lasers

Abstract

Chapter 8 examines a few cases where the pump rate and/or cavity losses are time-dependent. We also consider situations when a nonlinear optical element, such as a saturable absorber, is inserted in the laser cavity, where nonlinearity causes the laser to depart from stable cw operation. In such cases we are dealing with transient laser behavior. The transient cases we consider can be divided into two categories: (1) Cases, such as relaxation oscillations, Q-switching, gain-switching, and cavity-dumping, where, ideally, a single-mode laser is involved; these can be described by a rate equation treatment. (2) Cases involving many modes, e.g., mode-locking, which requires a different treatment, such as a description in terms of either the fields of all the oscillating modes (frequency domain description) or in terms of a self-consistent circulating pulse within the cavity (time domain description).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnic Institute of Milan and National Research Council, Milan, Italy

    Orazio Svelto

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  1. Orazio Svelto
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© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Svelto, O. (1998). Transient Laser Behavior. In: Principles of Lasers. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6266-2_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-6266-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3289-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-6266-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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