Chromium doped zinc selenide optical fiber lasers
Justin R. Sparks, Stephen C. Aro, Rongrui He, Melanie L. Goetz, James P. Krug, Sean A. McDaniel, Patrick A. Berry, Gary Cook, Kenneth L. Schepler, Pier J. A. Sazio, Venkatraman Gopalan, John V. Badding
Abstract
The optical fiber geometry is known for rugged, high power laser sources that are preferred for many applications, but is typically limited to the visible and near-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum due to the transmission limits of silica (< 2 µm). This wavelength range could be extended into the mid-infrared using transition metal doped, crystalline II-VI optical gain media, but these materials cannot be fabricated into optical fibers using conventional glass drawing methods. An in-situ high pressure chemical vapor deposition method for the fabrication of silica-cladded <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mtext>ZnSe</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> fiber cores uniformly doped with <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mtext>Cr</mml:mtext> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> is reported. Optical pumping experiments reveal that these doped fibers exhibit threshold behavior and thus function as mid-infrared optical fiber lasers. Finite element calculations show that undesirable thermal effects common in bulk II-VI crystals are mitigated in the fiber geometry.