Efficient continuous wave and broad tunable lasers with the Tm:GdScO<sub>3</sub> crystal
Qingsong Song, Ning Zhang, Jian Liu, Xinyu Qian, Chaoyi Zhang, Yanyan Xue, Yongguang Zhao, Xiaodong Xu, Kheirreddine Lebbou, Jun Xu
Abstract
The spectroscopic properties and tunable laser performances of the orthorhombic perovskite Tm:GdScO 3 crystal grown by the Czochralski method are comparatively studied for polarization along different crystallographic axes. The polarized emission spectrum of Tm:GdScO 3 along the b -axis exhibits, to the best of our knowledge, the broadest bandwidth among all the single Tm 3+ -doped bulk gain media, indicating the strong inhomogeneous line broadening of Tm 3+ ions in GdScO 3 and thus leads to a broad and smooth gain spectrum. Tunable laser operation with a tuning range as broad as 321 nm from 1824 nm to 2145 nm is achieved, which indicates its potential for few-optical-cycle pulse generation in the 2-µm spectral range.