Unlocking Dynamical Diversity
Chapter One
Introduction
Deborah M. Kane and K. Alan Shore
The laser as a directed, high brightness, coherent source of light was a dream come true at its
first demonstration in 1960. A jump of several orders of magnitude improvement towards the
ideal of a single frequency, 'zero' linewidth, spatially coherent, plane wave source of light
had been made. A major new research field in physics and engineering - the development of
different types of lasers, aiming to cover that part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum
that can be called 'light', grew rapidly. The 'solution without a problem', as the laser was
unsupportively described, soon became the light source of choice in so many applications,
that as we write, the research field of laser applications is a far larger one than lasers. Indeed,
much of laser development has been motivated by the significant markets for their end use.
As laser physics and engineering grew, so did the knowledge that real lasers have outputs
that are dynamically and spectrally ... read full excerpt from Unlocking Dynamical Diversity: Optical Feedback Effects on Semiconductor Lasers ebook
