Tunable laser operation of a Tm3+-doped tellurite glass laser near 2μm pumped by a 1211nm semiconductor disk laser

We report on the performance around 1970 nm of a thulium-doped TZNG bulk glass laser pumped by a semiconductor disk laser (SDL) emitting at 1211 nm. A pump-limited maximum output power of 60 mW at 1946 nm was obtained with a measured slope efficiency of 22.4%. The tuning range of 115 nm extended from 1850 nm to 2040 nm. Comparison with a previously reported performance when pumped at 793 nm with Ti:sapphire laser is discussed highlighting the competitiveness of pumping at 1211 nm.