Abstract

Laser ceramics have been expected as gain media of high intensity optical source for the laser ignition [1], the laser fusion [2], and so on due to their advantages to single crystalline laser gain media [3]. However, the birefringent scattering between grains in ceramic media prevents non-cubic materials to act as laser ceramics. In order to realize anisotropic laser ceramics, we invented the micro-domain control of crystal orientation for polycrystalline ceramic media using the enhancement of magnetic anisotropy by rare-earth doping [4], which produced highly transparent anisotropic ceramics with well-aligned grains under the static magnetic field [5]. We also demonstrated the laser oscillation with anisotropic laser ceramics that was consist of well-aligned micro-domains along the easy-magnetization axis [6].

© 2015 IEEE