From: utzoo!henry
Newsgroups: net.physics
Title: supershort laser pulses 
Article-I.D.: utzoo.2755
Posted: Tue Jan 18 17:50:42 1983
Received: Tue Jan 18 17:50:42 1983

A recent amazing development:  Richard Fork and Charles Shank of Bell Labs
have managed to generate laser pulses 30 femtoseconds long.  That's a disk
of photons maybe a centimeter or two across and 9 microns thick.  They say
the pulses could be made even shorter -- it's more a question of money
than feasibility -- but they are rapidly approaching physical limits:
9 microns is only about 14 wavelengths.