Everything About ___
Live briefing

Everything about Mode locking

Way to produce very short laser bursts

Mode locking is a technique in optics by which a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration, on the order of picoseconds (10−12 s) or femtoseconds (10−15 s). A laser operated in this way is sometimes referred to as a femtosecond laser, for example, in modern refractive surgery. The basis of the technique is to induce a fixed phase relationship between the longitudinal modes of the laser's resonant cavity. Constructive interference between these modes can cause the laser light to be produced as a train of pulses. The laser is then said to be "phase-locked" or "mode-locked". Wikipedia →

🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path

  1. Read the overview: Mode lockingA 5-minute orientation
  2. Skim a recent paper: Spatiotemporal mode-locking and dissipative solitons in multimode fiber lasersInfluential work since 2022
  3. Pick up a classic book: AlGaAs single-mode stabilityThe most-reprinted book on the subject
  4. Read the landmark paper: Mode-locking of lasersCited 1,250 times
  5. Go sideways: Kerr-lens modelockingA closely related topic
  6. Go sideways: Semiconductor saturable-absorber mirrorA closely related topic

📖 Definitions

Noun The use of mode-locked lasers to generate ultrashort pulses of light.

🗂️ The subject at a glance

  1. Laser cavity modes
  2. Mode-locking theory
  3. Mode-locking methods
  4. Practical mode-locked lasers
  5. Applications
  6. Locking mechanism of laser cavity

🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)

🆕 Influential since 2022

📚 Books worth reading

Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.

🔗 Related topics