Abstract

Traveling wave pumped amplifiers have been successfully used^1,2 in amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source-amplifier systems to create picosecond light pulses. Very recently we succeeded in generating tunable almost transform-limited femtosecond pulses with the same arrangement using femtosecond pump pulses.³ The key element of this attractive pulse source is the traveling wave amplifier (TWA). We demonstrate that this device can be used as an amplifying optical gate with switch-on and switch-off times as short as the pump pulse duration.

© 1990 Optical Society of America