PULSE STREAMING OF OPTICALLY-PUMPED AMPLIFIERS

摘要

Ablative material removal with a series of very short optical pulses is especially useful as it is essentially non-thermal and essential without applying pressure to the surface. The present invention provides a method of controlling an optical pumped amplifier capable of optical ablation at an ablation rate by directly pumping the amplifier with pump diodes, introducing sub-ten-millisecond streams of pulses separated by pauses into amplifier, and controlling the ratio of streaming-time to pause-time to control at least one of amplifier-operating-temperature and ablation-rate. The ratio of streaming-time to pause-time can be used to vary the ablation rate when the amplifier is operated at a lower than maximum ablation rate. In some embodiments, current through the pump diodes is used to control pump diode operating temperature.