Crystal garnet-type laser

Garnet activated by trivalent Cr is a promising system for tunable laser appUcations and those systems have been well studied. Cr + replaces Ap" in octahedral sites with a weak crystal field. The transition involved in laser action is T2- A2, a vibrationally broadened band. At room temperature it has a maximum in the 715-825 nm range with a decay time in the 100-250 ps range depending on AE between the E and T2 levels. When the AE is maximal, narrow fines also appear from the E level. At low temperatures, when thermal activation of the T2 level is difficult, J -lines luminescence becomes dominant with the main fine at 687 nm (Monteil at al. 1988). We studied pyrope artificially activated by Cr and also found the two emission types described above (Fig. 5.26). 

In a solid state laser, the active species is distributed throughout a solid, usually crystalline, material, although glass can also be used as a host. The lasers are robust and frequently tunable, though heat dissipation can sometimes be an issue. Certain types of solid state crystals, for example neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd YAG), can be pumped by diode lasers instead of by other lasers or by flashlamps, which is often the case for other materials. Such diode-pumped, solid state systems are reliable, economical, compact, and easy to operate—in fact, many commercial systems are turnkey, needing only to be plugged in and turned on to operate. 

The technique of laser heating in a DAC is based on three main features optical transparency of diamond anvils the samples can be heated via the optical absorption of intense laser radiation, and the temperature can be determined from the thermal radiation spectrum of the heated sample using the Planck formula [10]. Laser radiation for heating of a sample in a DAC was first implemented by Ming and Bassett [11], who used a pulsed ruby laser, and a continuous-wave Nd-YAG (yttrium-aluminum-garnet) laser to heat samples in a DAC above 3300 K, and up to 2300 K, respectively. Today two types of continuous wave infrared (IR) lasers are extensively used in laser heating experiments Solid state lasers (Nd-doped YAG, or YLF (yttrium-lithium-fluorite) crystals with the most intense line at... 

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