Abstract
The pulse transfer characteristics of gain-switched laser amplifiers are investigated analytically. New closed-form solutions have been obtained including arbitrary space- and time-dependent pump distributions. The general results are specialzied to the important cases of uniform and traveling-wave excitation. Input-pulse shapes considered include step functions, practial oscillator output pulses, and also the inherent spontaneous-emission noise. The results lead to improved models for pulse amplifiers and mirrorless traveling-wave lasers. By proper choice of pump characteristics arbitrary output-pulse waveforms can be synthesized.