Properties of Optical and Laser-Related Materials

Abstract

This book presents a very concise compilation of physical parameters of many `classical' and `novel' optical materials, laser-active ones included. Until now, there has been no comparable data source on the market. Optical technologies have grown extremely fast since the advent of lasers and nonlinear optics. In the last decade, optics has become a leading technology in communication, information storage, material processing and measuring procedures. On one hand, fundamental discoveries and inventions in the fields of lasers and nonlinear optics provided important preconditions for this development. On the other hand, however, only great progress in material sciences and technologies have made possible the rapid transfer of new light sources and optical devices from R&D laboratories to real-world application. High homogeneity and cleaness of materials and the precise knowledge of their decisive optical, mechanical, thermal, electronic and magnetic parameters have become important, and critical in gaining technological success. Overall performance, and particularly and reliability of devices and systems depend critically on the right use of the right material. For instance, successes in today's ultralong-distance optical-fibre communication systems originate first of all from progress in producing low-loss optical glass fibers and reliable semiconductor lasers. Thus not only physicists, but also engineers urgently need reliable source of such parameters when desiging, developing and constructing devices and systems containg lasers, optical, electo-optical and opto-electronic components. `Properties of optical and laser-related materials' comprises optical and other material parameters with relevance to the performance of lasers and devices in well-ordered tables. The ordering of material properties as well as units and conversion factors are briefly explained in an introductory chapter. A short compilation of important equations in which the respective parameters appear would have been of value to the user, compare for example, the handbooks cited in the introduction and Landoldt Bornstein. The author refers to more than 1000 original papers where he compares and carefully evaluates the data when several sources are available. Here I would like to mention that the author himself if a very successful scientist with experience in laser physics, nonlinear optics and laser spectroscopy. He and his colleagues contributed much to the results contained in this volume, for instance, very useful data on laser damage thresholds and optical nonlinearities. Among the materials to which the data refer are lasing dielectric crystals and semiconductors, high-transparency optical crystals, glasses and polymers, efficient second-order nonlinear optical crystals as well as specifically selected liquids and gases. Author and publisher are kindly asked to publish future editions also on compact disk which would allow easy processing of data by the user as well as frequent up dating of the whole content by the editor. In summary, I recommend this book to all physicists and engineers who design or use linear and nonlinear optical devices and components.