Pulse-Area-Pulse-Energy Description of a Traveling-Wave Laser Amplifier

Abstract

The effects of a transverse mode, degeneracy, overlapping transitions, background losses, and transverse population variations are included in an analysis of light-pulse amplification in a system with an inhomogeneously broadened gain profile. Over a wide range of resonant gain and background loss, the steady-state pulse energy is proportional to the inverse cube of the pulse width, in accord with the observations of Frova et al.