Growth, Characterization, and Applications of Laser Host and Nonlinear Crystals.

摘要

Titanium-doped YAlO3(Ti:YAlO3) is an attractive candidate for a visible to near-infrared tunable solid-state laser. Un-seeded crystal growth utilizing the heat exchanger method has produced Ti:YAlO3 crystals up to 1-cm in length. Spectroscopic measurements at room temperature showed that the Ti3+ absorption peaked at approximately 430 nm and extended from 380 nm to 550 nm. The fluorescence emission peaked at 600 nm and extended from 540 nm to 800 nm. No detectable parasitic absorption was observed in the 600-800 nm region; the figure of merit was estimated to be in excess of 15 as compared to previously reported values of 1.5 to 3. The lifetime of the excited state was measured to be 11.4 + or - 0.5 microseconds. In this work lasing was not observed because of pump-induced excited-state absorption in our crystals, presumably arising from charge transfer transitions to energy levels of defects, and not because of parasitic absorption. Keywords: Parasitic absorption; Spectroscopic measurements; Fluorescence emission; Reprints. (jhd)