Ultrashort pulse laser

An ultrashort pulse laser is a laser that emits ultrashort pulses of light, generally of the order of femtoseconds to ten picoseconds. They are also known as ultrafast lasers—a misnomer, since the speed of light is constant in a given medium.

Common current ultrashort pulse laser technologies include Ti-sapphire lasers and dye lasers. High output peak power usually requires chirped pulse amplification of a seed pulse from a modelocked laser. Dealing with high optical powers also needs the nonlinear optical phenomena to be taken in account.