Development of low-ion doped Cr:LiCAF lasers

Since the discovery of semiconductor lasers 50 years ago, these lasers have been found in numerous applications across various fields, including technology, scientific research, defense, healthcare, and more. These lasers required a great deal of aspects properties depending on the wavelength tunability and operation regimes. Based on this, for the femtosecond laser applications Ti:sapphire and Nd:YAG was one of the most prominent members of the solid-state laser family. Lately, as a low-cost alternative Cr:colquiirites lasers have been attracted. Cr:LiCAF laser, as a member of the colquiriite family, exhibits exceptional performance in terms of its physical properties, especially for power scaling applications. In this thesis, we have investigated diode pumped low ion doped Cr:LiCAF laser performance in terms of different laser operations. Power scaling potential of different lengths (10 mm, 12 mm, 15 mm, and 20 mm) Cr:LiCAF lasers tested with four multimode diode-pumped laser system. As a result, with a 10 mm 1.25% chromium doped gain medium 2.22 W output power was obtained. Continuous wave tuning range between 741-874 nm achieved. Afterward, in the gain switch experiments with a utilized pulse pumping setup 18% increase in the output power level was observed. We have also demonstrated the intracavity second harmonic generation. With different nonlinear crystals up to 441 mW, second harmonic power was generated. On the pulse generation parts, around 3 μs passively Q-switched Cr:LiCAF lasers were demonstrated. In passive mode-locking experiments, we have obtained a minimum of 65 fs pulses. Moreover, we have performed temperature estimation studies during lasing in Cr:LiCAF laser. Finally, off-surface birefringent filter plates two-color performance was tested on Cr:LiCAF laser numerically and experimentally. These studies show the potential of low-ion doped Cr:LiCAF laser for different applications.