Slope efficiency
The slope efficiency is an important property of a laser. It is obtained by plotting the laser output power against the input pump power. Above the lasing threshold, the resulting curve is usually close to a straight line. The slope efficiency is the slope of this line. Slope efficiency can similarly be defined in terms of output and input energies instead of powers. This makes it applicable to pulsed lasers.
The curve described above is nearly linear above threshold when the optical losses in the
Whatever the shape of a slope efficiency curve, it should be possible to extrapolate the line of best fit to find the
The optimization of the laser output power for a given pump power usually involves a compromise between high slope efficiency and low threshold pump power.