Abstract

We have investigated the dynamical behaviour of mode-locked lasers operating in the coherent limit. Many years ago, Fox and Smith^[1] conjectured that modelocked laser pulses were π-pulses. Although this is not in general the case, if mode-locked laser operation in the coherent limit could be achieved, it would have some appealing features. In particular, the pulse duration would no longer be limited by the spectral bandwidth of the laser transition, because coherent effects occur precisely in the regime where the optical pulses are much shorter than the inverse homogeneous linewidth (- T2).

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