Changing the statistical properties of noisy laser radiation in a saturable absorber

Changing the statistical properties of the noisy radiation of a multi-mode nanosecond YAG:Nd3+ laser by passing it through a saturable absorber (a met hanol solution of polymethine dye 3274-u) is experimentally studied. A cons iderable increase in the contrast ratio of the second-order intensity auto- correlation function of the radiation is observed, indicating that the stat istics of the noisy laser light become super-Gaussian after passing through the absorber. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reser ved.