54 Handbook of Biomedical Optics
4.2.3.3.2 Modelocking
Modelocking can produce laser pulses from several picoseconds
to less than 10 fs in width. Pulse formation in modelocked lasers
can be interpreted in terms of interference between multiple lon-
gitudinal modes. e greater the number of modes involved in
the interference, the shorter the resulting pulses. Very broad gain
bandwidth is thus necessary to achieve the narrowest pulses. e
necessary interference can only occur if the dierent longitu-
dinal laser modes maintain a xed phase relationship between
themselves. is is not an inherent behavior in lasers, but can
be induced by creating modulation sidebands that link, that is,
lock, adjacent modes to each other. e modulation frequency ...