Abstract

Recently a family of transition metal ions doped crystals have demons trated C.W. laser action in the near infrared¹. They essencially compete in the near infrared with color centers², with the advantage of beeing stable but with different spectroscopic properties, i.e. low transition cross sections and long decay times³. These properties lead to small efficiences when these lasers are col linearly pumped by other lasers. This can be partially overcome by multiple passages throught the laser medium, increasing the net absorption⁴. An ideal alternative for pumping efficiently these laser media is intracavity pumping, but this is not feasible in C.W. operation due to the limited gain of the pumping laser.

© 1990 Optical Society of America