We experimentally demonstrated the contrast enhancement in a Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) laser with a noncollinear femtosecond optical-parametric amplifier. A total gain of 3.4 × 10(4) and pulse energy of 26 μJ were achieved. With the clean high-energy seeding pulse, the contrast ratio of the main amplified laser pulse to the amplified spontaneous emission in the Ti: sapphire ...

A four-stage laser system was developed, emitting at a wavelength of 6450 nm with a 3-5 ns pulse duration, < or = 2 mJ pulse energy, and 1/2 Hz pulse repetition rate. The laser system successfully ablated rat brain tissue, where both the collateral damage and the ablation rate compare favorably with that previously observed with a Mark-III Free-Electron Laser.

The holmium:YAG (Ho:YAG) laser lithotriptor is capable of operating at high pulse energies, but efficient operation is limited to low pulse rates (∼10 Hz) during lithotripsy. On the contrary, the thulium fiber laser (TFL) is limited to low pulse energies, but can operate efficiently at high pulse rates (up to 1000 Hz). This study compares stone ablation threshold, ablation rate, and retropulsio...

Pulses of 100-fsec duration are obtained by synchronous pumping of a colliding-pulse ring dye laser with a mode-locked Ar(+)-ion laser. Stable operation of the synchronously pumped colliding-pulse mode-locked laser over hours was obtained by a suitable choice of the distance between the gain and the absorber in combination with an appropriate pump-pulse sequence.

Using a stability analysis based on the Lyapunov method, we study pulse dropout in an actively mode-locked fiber laser. The analysis gives a limit on the maximum pulse duration and the minimum laser power that are needed for stable operation without pulse dropout. The stability of pulse trains was studied analytically and validated numerically for different pulse shapes.

A laser-boosted relativistic solid-density paraboloidal foil is known to efficiently reflect and focus a counterpropagating laser pulse. Here we show that in the case of an ultrarelativistic counterpropagating pulse, a high-energy and ultrahigh-intensity reflected pulse can be more effectively generated by a relatively slow and heavy foil than by a fast and light one. This counterintuitive resu...

The design, calibration, and performance of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) receiver are described. The MOLA measurements include the range to the surface, which is determined by the laser-pulse time of flight; the height variability within the footprint determined by the laser echo pulse width; and the apparent surface reflectivity determined by the ratio of the echo to transmitted pul...

High peak power laser systems of up to petawatt [1] are based on chirped pulse amplification (CPA) technique [2]. In the CPA laser system, ultrashort pulses from an oscillator are first stretched below the nonlinear pulse distortion threshold to reduce the peak power and the amplified pulses are recompressed at the output by a compressor. Stable ultrashort pulse oscillator is necessary for CPA ...

In this paper, the combination of conduction with radiation into a semitransparent medium which includes absorption, emission and scattering has been investigated. In order to Study the conduction in medium, the Non-Fourier heat conduction has been applied. In this model there is a time delay between heat flux and temperature gradient. Also, in contrast with Fourier heat conduction, the speed o...

A single-transverse-mode Q-switched Nd-glass laser, which can operate over a variable number of longitudinal modes, has been used to investigate the influence of the temporal nature of the laser pulse on the multiphoton ionization probability of xenon atoms. For a seven-mode laser pulse, the number of ions formed is increased by several orders of magnitude over that produced by a single-longitu...