Minerals & Metallurgy

DescriptionTi:sapphire (Titanium doped Sapphire,Website:http://www.meta-laser.com, Al2O3:Ti3+) is used for making ultra short pulse solid-state or wavelength tunable lasers.Ti:sapphire lasers are also very convenient e.g. for pumping test setups of new solid-state lasers (e.g. based onneodymium-orytterbium-doped gain media), since they can easily be tuned to the required pump wavelength and allow one to work with very high pumpbrightnessdue to their goodbeam qualityand high output power of typically several watts. Features:Best materials for ultrashor pulse generationTunable range from 600-1100nmHigh gainCould be pumped by shor pulse flash lampsGood physical and optical properties???Properties of Ti:sapphireSapphire (monocrystalline Al2O3) has an excellent thermal conductivity, alleviating thermal effects even for high laser powers and intensities.The Ti3+ion has a very largegain bandwidth(much larger than that ofrare-earth-doped gain media), allowing the generation of very short pulses and also widewavelength tunability(typically using abirefringent tuner). The maximum gain and laser efficiency are obtained around 800nm. The possible tuning range is ≈?650nm to 1100nm, but different mirror sets are normally required for covering this huge range, and exchanging mirror sets is a tedious task. (The number of mirror sets required can be reduced by using ultrabroadbandchirped mirrors.)There is also a wide range of possible pump wavelengths, which however are located in thegreenspectral region, where powerfullaser diodesare not available. In most cases, several watts of pump power are used, sometimes even 20W. Originally, Ti:sapphire lasers were in most cases pumped with 514-nmargon ion lasers, which are powerful, but very inefficient, expensive to operate, and bulky. Other kinds ofgreen lasersare now available, andfrequency-doubledsolid-state lasersbased onneodymium-doped gain mediaare widely used. The pump wavelength is then typically 532nm, with a slightly reducedpump