Generation of tunable femtosecond pulses in a traveling-wave amplifier

The German physicist Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) was the first to generate and detect certain types of electromagnetic waves in the laboratory. Starting in 1887, he performed a series of experiments that confirmed the existence of electromagnetic waves and verified that they travel at the speed of light. Hertz used an alternating-current RLC (resistor-inductor-capacitor) circuit that resonated at a known frequency and connected it to a loop of wire. High voltages induced across the gap in the...

A pulse is a short burst of radio waves distributed over a range of frequencies that simultaneously excites all the nuclei in the sample. Upon passing a radio frequency pulse along the x-axis, the nuclei absorb energy corresponding to their Larmor frequencies and achieve resonance. This shifts the net magnetization vector from the z-axis toward the transverse plane. This angle of rotation of the magnetization vector, or the flip angle, is proportional to the duration and intensity of the pulse.