Abstract

Sources of high-power pulses delivering kilowatts of peak power with duration in the nanosecond range at high repetition rate and operating in the eye-safe spectral window around 1.55 μm are of considerable interest for applications in free-space optical communications and dynamic ranging. The traditional way to generate high-power pulses is to use a Q-switched solid-state laser. However, this technique does not usually allow us to produce short pulses at a high repetition rate at the same time. A Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser providing 20-ns pulses at 500 Hz and operating around 1.5 μm has recently been demonstrated.¹ But further attempts to increase a repetition rate in the laser are limited by a finite recovery time of population inversion.

© 1996 Optical Society of America