Peak Power
The maximum power delivered in a laser pulse. Peak power is an important metric in laser safety as the higher the peak power of a pulsed laser, the more damage it can cause to a safety filter. Consider a laser that generates pulses with an energy of 100mJ (1 x 10-1 J). If the pulse duration is 200µs (2 x 10-4 S), the peak power is 1 x 10-1 / 2 x 10-4 equals 500 Watts. If the pulse duration were to reduce to 10ns (1 x 10-8 S), the peak power would rise to 1 x 10-1 / 1 x 10-8 equals 10MW (1 x 107 Watts).
