Significance of intra-cavity power density in synchronous mode-locking of CW-dye lasers

It is shown that there is a well-defined relation between the intra-cavity power density and the temporal structure of ultrashort light pulses generated by a synchronously pumped cw dye laser. To obtain pulses of good quality with high output power the beam cross-section in the lasing medium must be large, because the best performance is achieved at low power density.