Proceedings Article | 26 February 2010
KEYWORDS: Fiber lasers, Optical fibers, Glasses, Mid-IR, Mirrors, Laser applications, Near infrared, Laser optics, Imaging spectroscopy, Chalcogenide glass
Laser cavities emitting in the near and medium infrared wavelength range, made of rare earth doped optical fibers and
suitable pairs of integrated mirrors, are used in a large number of applications. Nowadays, the efficient employment of
near and medium infrared laser beams is largely widespread in the field of m*aterial processing, surgery, directed energy,
remote sensing, spectroscopy, imaging, and so on. In a lot of cases, the high conversion efficiency, the excellent beam
quality, the compactness and, the good heat dissipation capability make fiber lasers competitive and attractive with
respect to other light sources, such as ion-doped crystal and bulk glass lasers, optical parametric oscillators,
semiconductor and gas lasers. The paper aims to recall and/or briefly illustrate a few among the numerous strategies
recently followed by research laboratories and industries to obtain laser sources based on rare earth doped optical fibres.
A recall on the host materials and the dopants employed for their construction, and the corresponding applications is
given, too. Moreover, an example of near infrared (NIR) fiber optic laser development, by employing available on
market components is illustrated by underlining the possibility to easily obtain high beam quality.
