Ce/sup 3+/-activated fluoride crystals as prospective active media for widely tunable ultraviolet ultrafast lasers with direct 10-ns pumping

New possibilities have been investigated for recently developed solid-state tunable ultraviolet (UV) laser materials such as Ce/sup 3+/ ion-activated LuLiF/sub 4/ (LLF) and LiCaAlF/sub 6/ (LiCAF). With their broad-gain width, demonstrated reliability, and high efficiency, they are attractive for ultrashort pulse generation and amplification. To prove that, we have demonstrated UV picosecond-pulse amplification using Ce:LLF. For such new laser materials, we proposed a passive self-injection seeding scheme for the direct generation of short-pulse trains, which does not require CW operation capability or an external short-pulse seeding laser, Using this simple scheme, a UV sub-nanosecond pulse train is directly and passively generated from Ce:LLF pumped by a standard 10-ns KrF excimer laser, and Ce:LiCAF pumped by the fourth harmonic of a conventional 10-ns Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. >

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