ABSTRACT
The availability of lasers as pointers for presentations and the use of lasers for light shows have made them quite common. One of the key properties of waves is that they interfere. For example, if two waves of the same energy and with the same phase are added, they interfere constructively. The resulting intensity, interestingly, is the sum of the two waves squared instead of just their sum. Laser intensity can be increased by compressing light into very powerful pulses. A completely different motivation for the generation of short pulses came from the telecommunication industry. As scientists and engineers were contemplating the use of optical fibers and light pulses to communicate information, it became clear that the transmission length of a particular message depended on the duration of the pulses being used to communicate it.
