Abstract

History of high power solid-state lasers (HPSSL) started in 1960: the first successfully demonstrated by Maiman a ruby laser was, according to common definitions, a high power laser. Since that time HPSSLs were so much developed and now constitute a leading and a most important class of lasers. Among these pulsed HPSSLs are of most interest for majority of current and potential applications. Main concepts of generation of high power laser pulses have been proposed during the 35 year laser history: Q-switching, mode-locking, direct and chirped-pulse amplification. Many experimental and theoretical studies of these concepts resulted in understanding of nonlinear dynamics of lasers, proposal and development of efficient optical elements and schemes for manipulating of laser operation regimes to obtain laser pulses with a variable temporal shape and duration in a wide range from nanoseconds through picoseconds to femtoseconds and a high output power ranging from megawatts to petawatts.

© 1996 Optical Society of America