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Picosecond Lasers

Definition: lasers emitting pulses with picosecond durations

Alternative term: ultrafast lasers

More general terms: pulsed lasers, mode-locked lasers

German: Pikosekundenlaser

Categories: lasers, light pulses

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A picosecond laser is a laser which emits optical pulses with a duration between 1 ps and (usually) some tens of picoseconds. It thus also belongs to the category of ultrafast lasers or ultrashort pulse lasers.

Sometimes, other laser-based sources for picosecond pulses – for example synchronously pumped OPOs – are also called picosecond lasers, even if they are strictly speaking no lasers.

A variety of laser types can generate picosecond pulses, with other performance parameters varying in wide ranges:

Compared with femtosecond lasers, picosecond laser sources are often more economical. In applications such as micromachining, they offer similar performance.

Suppliers

The RP Photonics Buyer's Guide contains 73 suppliers for picosecond lasers. Among them:

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See also: mode-locked lasers, mode locking, ultrafast lasers, femtosecond lasers, ultrashort pulses, nanosecond lasers, solid-state lasers, mode-locked fiber lasers
and other articles in the categories lasers, light pulses

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