Room‐temperature tunable mid‐infrared lasers on transition‐metal doped II–VI compound crystals grown from vapor phase

Abstract

AbstractSeeded free growth method with physical transport was used for preparation of large‐size II–VI single crystals uniformly doped by transition metals directly during the growth. The grown crystals possess small intrinsic losses. Based on these crystals new results on development of mid‐IR lasers were achieved. With the CdSe:Cr crystal pumped at the room temperature (RT) by a continuous wave (CW) 1.908‐µm thulium fiber laser, output laser power at 2.6 µm was increased up to 1.7 W. CW lasing from the ZnSe:Fe crystal was achieved using the 2.97‐µm CW Cr2+:CdSe laser as a pump source. In this case the output power as high as 0.2 W was obtained at 4.1 µm and T = 80 K. Broad spectral tuning of the Cr2+:CdSe (2.26–3.61 µm) and Fe2+:ZnSe (3.95–5.05 µm) lasers was achieved at RT in the pulsed operation. The RT laser action from CdS:Cr and CdSe:Fe was demonstrated for the first time. The output power of the CW Cr+2:CdS laser was 0.81 W. The pulsed Fe2+:CdSe laser was tuned in the 4.6–5.9 µm spectral range.