Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-laser-science-and-quantum-information-processing-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/3/a/solution

Use mode locking to phase-lock many longitudinal cavity modes; their repeated constructive interference produces short optical pulses. A saturable absorber can select this pulsed operation. A fundamental repetition rate corresponds to a round trip, or an optical round-trip length ; a linear air-filled cavity would therefore be about long. A compact alternative is a faster mode-locked oscillator followed by pulse selection and, if required, amplification. Ordinary Q-switching alone generally does not provide pulses.[ref]

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