Ytterbium-doped tunable ceramic laser

In this paper, a LD-pumped tunable ceramic laser was demonstrated with an uncoated 5 at.%Yb/sup 3+/:Y/sub 2/O/sub 3/ ceramics. A 976-nm fiber coupled LD was used for zero-phone-line pumping, and the pumping beam was focused into the 5 at.%Yb/sup 3+/:Y/sub 2/O/sub 3/ ceramics with two lenses. An SF18 equilateral prism was used as a dispersive device, and the output coupler OC had T=3% coating at 1030 nm. We achieved the tunable ceramic laser in two regions, 1034-1050 and 1071-1078 nm wavelength, with pumping power of 3.9 W.