High efficiency and tunability of holmium-doped fluoride crystals

We present the growth and the room-temperature spectroscopic analysis of three fluoride hosts, namely BaY2F8, LiYF4 and KYF4, equally codoped with 5.2% thulium and 0.5% holmium, together with the cw laser results in the 2 mum wavelength region of BaYF and YLF at room temperature. A comparison is carried out between the three crystals, showing the higher slope efficiency of YLF-laser, the wider tunability range of BaYF-laser, and the promising 170-nm broad-band emission of KYF at around 2 mum. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.