[Laser] Re: pulsed laser 101

[Tim Toast]

hi Art and all

One device that comes to mind is the ordinary Xenon strobe
tube (such as from a camera flash or dance/disco strobe)
which can have a huge output in lines near 850 nm, and can
be filtered by a cheap low pass IR filter to remove the
visible light. Pulse widths are in the range of 10 to 1000
microseconds for normal Xenon's, and shorter for laser
driver strobes. 
Since i live in an area that is close to several
transmission towers, i hear the xenon strobe 'pops' all the
time. I assume the pulse widths are in the range of .1 to 1
millisecond for maximum visibility. Since i am using the
PGP RX with its low bandwidth, the actual pulses my sound
card gets are probably stretched out a bit from their real
sizes. I had hoped i would be experimenting with strobes by
now but i haven't had much time sadly. I have some screen
caps and audio clips on my website of the local 'pulse
noise' here.

http://www.aladal.net/toast/exp.html

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Also, does anyone have suggestions on how to produce very
short pulsed lasers at 850 nM (to coincide with photodiodes
best sensitivity)? Regarding the pulsed lasers, I can only
think of the old stud mounted pulsed diodes, but perhaps
there is another method that is practical.

All comments appreciated.

Art
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