Peak Power and Average Power in ns and Sub-ns Lasers
A significant and well-recognized difference between lasers and conventional, incoherent light sources, is the ability to concentrate laser emission in short pulses, with durations going down to a few femtoseconds, containing potentially only a few optical cycles. Technically, you can drive an incoherent LED source using current pulses. However, each pulse would have a maximum power (i.e. a peak power) equal to the average power of the same device if a continuous bias were applied. Only laser cavities can concentrate the stored energy within active materials in such a way to achieve peak powers orders of magnitude higher than their ave… Read More