Mode control in giant pulse lasers and some applications

The rather large linewidth of ruby lasers has been a serious limiting factor on the coherence length obtainable in certain applications. Also the lack of spatial coherence can be attributed to another form of multimoding in the laser. Specific mode control devices have been used to some advantage in small normal pulsed ruby lasers but no success has been obtained in high-power applications. Successful operation of high-power mode-selected devices will be described with emphasis placed upon the methods of mode selection. The resulting laser possesses a high degree of spatial and temporal coherence and therefore has been used for some interesting applications, such as holography and nonlinear optics. Some of these applications will be discussed.