Limit imposed by atmospheric dispersion on the minimum laser pulsewidth that can be transmitted undistorted

The dispersive effects of the atmosphere due to index of retraction variations with the frequency will permit one to transmit vertically through the whole atmosphere under clear weather conditions pulses having widths ranging from about 40 ps to about 1.0 ps with distortions varying from correspondingly small to large over this range of pulsewidths. However, even for a pulsewidth of 1.3 ps the half-voltage pulsewidth is only increased by about 10 percent.