Pulsed Fluoride Glass Fibre Lasers Operating near 3 µm

Pulsed fluoride glass fibre based lasers have many potential important applications in materials processing, medicine and defence. At present a number of continuous wave fluoride glass fibre lasers is offered commercially. However, there is still a large scope for the development of pulsed lasers. Therefore, in this contribution we give an up-to-date review of the recent progress in the development of gain switched and Q-switched fluoride glass fibre lasers. Also, we present new experimental results on dysprosium ion doped Q-switched fluoride glass fibre lasers.