Repetitive selfhyphen;Qhyphen;switching in a continuously pumped ruby laser

摘要

We report the observation of repetitive selfhyphen;Qhyphen;switched pulses from a continuously operating ruby laser pumped by an argon ion laser. 500hyphen;W pulses of 2 nsec width at a 3hyphen;kHz rate are observed. It is tentatively concluded from the pulse characteristics and other data that the phenomenon can be explained by a saturable absorber mechanism.