The increased interest in lasers operating in the mid-infrared spectral region has prompted the development of new gain materials with low maximum phonon energy. Fluorites (calcium fluoride [CaF2], strontium fluoride [SrF2], and barium fluoride [BaF2]) have emerged as promising laser host crystals due to their low phonon energies, high thermal conductivities, and ability to incorporate RE dopants. Dy3+ has been studied in CaF2 and SrF2 but its spectroscopic properties are largely unexplored in BaF2. In this work, dysprosium-doped barium fluoride was explored for its mid-infrared laser potential in the 3-μm spectral region. Results of absorption and fluorescence measurements were used to generate stimulated-emission cross sections, and the gain characteristics were determined at both room temperature and 77 K.
In the pursuit of new mid-IR laser gain materials, dysprosium-doped barium fluoride was evaluated for its potential laser emission in the 3-μm spectral region. Comprehensive spectroscopic characterization was performed, including absorption, fluorescence, and decay-time measurements. Efforts to determine the discrete Stark splittings of various Dy3+ manifolds in this host material were hampered by apparent multisite behavior of the RE dopant. Laser-relevant parameters such as absorption and stimulated-emission cross sections, quantum-efficiencies, and radiative lifetimes were determined for room temperature (300 K) and cryogenic temperature (77 K). The gain cross sections, which predict overall laser performance, were also calculated. Room-temperature laser operation of the 3-μm transition would suffer from low quantum efficiency and would require a high population inversion of approximately 40%. The parameters at 77 K show improvement across the board with multiple-times-higher cross-section intensities, nearly 4× higher quantum efficiency, and a positive gain cross section requiring less than 20% population inversion.
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