Abstract

Er-doped glass lasers have attracted much attention many years because of their unique ability to operate in the vicinity of 1.53…1.55 um that is very important for many applications in optical communications, eyes-safe rangefinders, ophtalmology, etc. The crystal hosts did not allow to obtain an effective emission at this wavelength due to peculiarities of their phonon spectra. However, the practical use of erbium glass lasers is limited to date owing to high-laser-emission thresholds, low efficiency, and difficulties to realize a cw operation. The present work describes our successful attempts to create new generation of high-effective low-threshold pulsed and cw erbium glass lasers.

© 1990 Optical Society of America