SIMPLE CONFIGURATION TO GENERATE SHORT BURSTS OF PICOSECOND OPTICAL PULSES

We have developed an efficient method of generating short bursts of pi cosecond optical pulses. The multiplying stage consists of simple opti cal elements, including 50/50 beam splitters and a 100% reflecting mir ror. Time delay between the pulses can be adjusted by changing the inc ident angle of the beam or the separation of the splitters. The multip lying scheme has been successfully applied to the output of a cw mode- locked Nd:YAG laser at 82 MHz. Multiplication of beam pulses up to a f actor of 8 was demonstrated. This technique promises to increase the r epetition rate of laser pulses up to hundreds of gigahertz.