Single pulse injection locking

Abstract

A system for providing a single pulse of laser oscillator radiation of broad spectral range operative to excite a plurality of modes of a ring laser operating as an injection locked oscillator. In order to provide injection locking of the ring oscillator at multiple modes, a pump laser for the laser oscillator has its cavity length substantially similar to that of the laser oscillator thereby producing partial mode locking of the laser oscillator by amplitude modulation of the pump laser. In this manner the laser oscillator provides a single pulse of mode rich frequencies which are chosen within the band desired in the ring laser. This pulse continuously circulates within the cavity of the laser oscillator. The output of the laser oscillator through an output mirror thus forms a series of pulses separated in time by the roundtrip delay of the laser oscillator cavity. A single such pulse is selected by Pockels cell gating for injection into the ring oscillator. The segregation of the single pulse insures broad spectral content to that pulse as applied to the injection locked oscillator with a substantially uniform amplitude range. The single pulse is effective to excite a plurality of modes in the injection locked oscillator as is desired for the application of isotope separation.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.