The pulse transfer characteristics of gain‐switched laser amplifiers are investigated analytically. New closed‐form solutions have been obtained including arbitrary space‐ and time‐dependent pump distributions. The general results are specialzied to the important cases of uniform and traveling‐wave excitation. Input‐pulse shapes considered include step functions, practial oscillator output pulses, and also the inherent spontaneous‐emission noise. The results lead to improved models for pulse amplifiers and mirrorless traveling‐wave lasers. By proper choice of pump characteristics arbitrary output‐pulse waveforms can be synthesized.
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