Gigawatt peak-power pulse generation by injection of a single short pulse in a regenerative amplifier above threshold (RAAT)

Abstract

We propose a very simple technique to extract, in a short pulse with good optical quality, all the laser energy in a pulsed system. The method essentially consists of injecting into a high power laser a short and weak pulse at a moment close to the time when the gain is equal to the losses (laser threshold). Subsequently, the spontaneous emission radiation is dominated at all times by the injected pulse. After multipass amplification, all the energy available in the system is extracted by the injected pulse.In this way, pulses of 2 ns have been obtained from a TEA–CO₂ laser of 15 J.