Solid-state laser
Generally, the active medium of a solid-state laser consists of a glass or crystalline "host" material, to which is added a "dopant" such as neodymium, chromium, erbium,[2] thulium[3] or ytterbium.[4] Many of the common dopants are rare-earth elements, because the excited states of such ions are not strongly coupled with the thermal vibrations of their crystal lattices (phonons), and their operational thresholds can be reached at relatively low intensities of laser pumping.Peter Sorokin and Mirek Stevenson at IBM's laboratories in Yorktown Heights (US) experimented with this material in the 1960s and achieved lasing at 2.5 μm shortly after Maiman's ruby laser.Solid state lasing media are typically optically pumped, using either a flashlamp or arc lamp, or by laser diodes.[11][12][13] These materials use a nonlinear optical behavior called saturable absorption to make a laser create short pulses.
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