For laser applications, crystalline fluoride materials offer some advantages with respect to oxides and glasses. Because of their large band-gap, fluorides exhibit large transparency windows that allows doping with different rare earth ions. Their low phonon energy avoids, in the case of RE3+ doping, considerably reduction in radiative multiphonon relaxations between adjacent RE3+ energy levels, allowing optical transitions in a broad spectral range with a high fluorescence quantum efficiency and limited thermal loads. Last but not least, their thermo-optic coefficients are negative, which compensates for thermal lensing during las er operation. These properties together with the high intensity confinement in waveguides, make fluorides attractive for the fabrication of waveguide lasers for applications in different spectral ranges. This talk will present the recent advances in fluoride waveguides fabricated by liquid phase epitaxy.
Western BOLANOS
Centre de recherche sur les Ions,les Matériaux et la Photonique
ENSICaen
6, Boulevard du Maréchal Juin
F-14050 Caen cedex 4
