Appeal No. 96-2043
Application 07/990,514
steps of replicating a laser beam of temporal duration J as an
array of N ($2) such beams; time shifting the N beams relative
to one another and stacking the beams end-to-end so as to form
a continuous composite beam of temporal duration )t=N ;
B
passing the continuous composite beam one or more times
through an optical amplification medium; physically separating
the composite beam into N amplified beam replicas; and time
shifting the replica beams so as to bring all beams into
temporal coincidence in a spatially contiguous array for
subsequent use.
One example of the apparatus disclosed by Seppala to
perform the method is shown in Figs. 3 and 4. A short pulse
40 from a laser is injected onto an array of partially
transparent reflectors 19-1, 19-2, . . . , 19-16, and divided
into 16 equal intensity pulses, 21-1, 21-2, . . . , 21-16.
These pulses are then sequenced in time by reflection from
another set of reflectors 23-1, 23-2, . . . , 23-16. For
example, if the pulse length of the injected signal is 20
nsec, then after beam splitting, delay, and "recombination"
(as in FIG. 2), the effective pulse length will be 16 times
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