A method for producing controllable double pulses from a Q-switched laser

A method is described for producing two controllable pulses from a Q-switched solid state laser, the time separation of the pulses being variable from about 30 nsec to a few microseconds. The technique involves Q-switching the system with a time variant loss which has two steps, the application of the first step only partially depleting the population inversion. The method has been demonstrated with an electro-optically Q-switched Nd:CaWO₄ laser.