ABSTRACT
Thanks to waveguiding, the high gains required for efficient pulsed operation of fiber amplifiers and lasers can be easily achieved with low-power laser diode pumps. The gain medium is then used as an energy storage device to either amplify or generate short pulses. This chapter discusses the generation and amplification of pulses on a nanosecond time scale by rare earth doped fiber devices. Recent increases in laser diode power and improvements in source design have led to a steady rise of the pulse energy and peak power of fiber lasers to the 500 µJ and multikilowatt level, respectively. Such short and intense pulses are anticipated to find applications in nonlinear optics, distributed sensing, optical time domain reflectometry, range finding and LIDAR systems.
