Continuous Wave (“CW”) Lasers Vs. Pulse Lasers

Continuous wave ("CW") lasers and pulsed lasers are two common forms of laser. Their different emission methods lead to different application fields.

A continuous wave ("CW") laser is one in which the beam produced in the laser is stable, exhibiting continuous sustained emission, much like a conventional light source. This type of laser produces a long-duration laser beam and is commonly used in laboratory research, medical care, communications and processing. Due to continuous emission, CW laser beams are very stable, have narrow spectral bandwidth and have higher precision. They are also much cheaper than pulsed lasers and are easy to operate for long-duration applications.

Pulsed lasers are controlled by switching inversions during specific periods, which makes the light pulses shorter. Because the power density of laser is very high, pulse laser is widely used in processing fields, such as cutting, welding and engraving, which require high precision and speed. Additionally, due to their instantaneous high-power energy, pulsed lasers are used in materials preparation, scientific research, and medicine.

Whether the laser is continuous or pulsed will affect the purchase of laser safety protection. Below, we will briefly explain that while the average power of the laser may be the same, the peaks of pulsed lasers require more protection (because protection from peaks is necessary).

Detailed differences:
Output characteristics:
Continuous wave laser: Continuous wave laser outputs a beam in a continuous and stable manner, and its power density remains constant over time. This means that the energy output from the laser remains relatively stable over a period of time.
Pulse laser: Pulse laser outputs a beam in the form of short pulses, and its power density rapidly increases to a peak in time, and then rapidly drops to zero. Pulsed lasers have high peak power but low average power.

Power:
Continuous wave laser: The power of continuous wave laser is usually expressed as stable average power. For example, a 10-watt continuous wave laser will continuously output 10 watts of power.
Pulse laser: The power of pulse laser is usually expressed in terms of pulse energy and repetition frequency. Pulse energy refers to the energy of a single pulse, while repetition frequency is the number of pulses generated by a pulsed laser per unit time. For example, a 10-watt pulsed laser might have an energy of 1 joule per pulse and a repetition rate of 10 Hz.

Application:
Continuous wave laser: Due to its stable output characteristics, continuous wave laser is widely used in fields that require continuous energy input such as continuous heating, cutting, welding, and laser printing.
Pulse laser: Pulse laser has high peak power and low average power, and is suitable for applications requiring high energy instantaneous input, such as laser medical treatment, material removal, precise micromachining and other fields.

Application Areas
1.Medical applications
Continuous wave lasers are common in medicine, where they are often used to perform surgery and treat skin diseases. However, this kind of laser has a relatively high lethality against living cells and is not suitable for directly cutting biological tissues. The output power of pulse laser is larger, which can cut and treat tissues more accurately. It is suitable for local tissue cutting and orthopedic surgery such as cataract surgery.
2.Industrial application
Continuous wave lasers are often used in quality control on industrial production lines, such as marking workpieces, printing labels, cutting thin sheets, etc. Pulse laser is widely used in the processing of mold manufacturing, precision machine parts and semiconductor manufacturing. Because the short-term nature of pulsed laser is suitable for fine processing.
3. Military applications
Pulse laser has relatively large applications in the military field. It can be used for anti-missile defense, detecting celestial bodies, ranging, and hitting targets, etc. Because it can produce extremely high power output and hit targets in a short time of milliseconds or even microseconds.

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