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Time and frequency uncertainty - short laser pulses (Worksheet)

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    57759
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    Name: ______________________________

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    Work in groups on these problems. You should try to answer the questions without referring to your textbook. If you get stuck, try asking another group for help.

    This group work activity is based on data published by Rizvi et al. "Continuously self-mode locked Ti:sapphire laser that produces sub-50-fs pulses" Opt. Lett. 1992, vol. 17, pp. 279-281.

    Using a Ti:sapphire laser, the authors created laser pulses that they measured to be 47 fs at the full width half maximum, as shown below in the Figure 3 from their paper.

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    What does full width half maximum mean? How is this shown in the figure (a)?

    Is 47 fs the shortest possible pulse that could arise from the spectrum in (b)? How could you know if this pulse is the shortest possible pulse? What would you have to do to figure this out?

    The spectrum in figure (b) is not completely symmetrical. How do you think that this affects the width of the pulse in time? Why?


    This page titled Time and frequency uncertainty - short laser pulses (Worksheet) is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Nancy Levinger.

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