section_path: Modes of operation/Pulsed operation
section_name: Pulsed operation
paragraph_text: Pulsed operation
  
  The pulsed operation of lasers refers to any laser not classified as a continuous wave so that the optical power appears in pulses of some duration at some repetition rate. This encompasses a wide range of technologies addressing many different motivations. Some lasers are pulsed simply because they cannot be run in continuous mode.
  
  In other cases, the application requires the production of pulses having as large an energy as possible. Since the pulse energy is equal to the average power divided by the repetition rate, this goal can sometimes be satisfied by lowering the rate of pulses so that more energy can be built up between pulses. In laser ablation, for example, a small volume of material at the surface of a workpiece can be evaporated if it is heated in a very short time, while supplying the energy gradually would allow for the heat to be absorbed into the bulk of the piece, never attaining a sufficiently high temperature at a particular point.
  
  Other applications rely on the peak pulse power (rather than the energy in the pulse), especially to obtain nonlinear optical effects. For a given pulse energy, this requires creating pulses of the shortest possible duration utilizing techniques such as Q-switching.
  
  The optical bandwidth of a pulse cannot be narrower than the reciprocal of the pulse width. In the case of extremely short pulses, that implies lasing over a considerable bandwidth, quite contrary to the very narrow bandwidths typical of CW lasers. The lasing medium in some dye lasers and vibronic solid-state lasers produces optical gain over a wide bandwidth, making a laser possible that can thus generate pulses of light as short as a few femtoseconds (10 s).