Generation of profiled light packets

Exemplary systems and methods are directed toward the creation of packets of light. A packet contains one or more pulses of light. In some embodiments, the packet may contain two, ten, 100, 1000, 1E6, or more pulses of light. The packet may be characterized by many of the same properties that are used to describe pulses, such as packet energy, packet width, packet power, packet period (for a periodic series of packets), and peak power of the packet. Packets may also be characterized by other properties describing their shapes. These properties may be described or defined by mathematical functions when the packets have complicated shapes.