Electro-optic devices based on doped wide-band materials are present in
industrial uses, in military applications and in everyday life. Whether
one engages in laser surgery with a neodymium-Y AG laser or one
communicates overseas using optical fibers, the development of these
materials is both scientifically and commercially of great interest.
Much of the most innovative work has been done in the last 15 years in
this area. A minor revolution in optical fiber communications has
occurred with the development of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers.
Solid-state laser development shifted into high-gear with the
theoretical and experimental study of doubly-doped garnet lasers. Recent
developments on semiconductor laser arrays are making diode- pumped
solid-state lasers commercially feasible. The purpose of this book is to
detail these developments and to point out that many of the same
underlying physical processes control advances in several diverse
applications. For example, the basic science of energy transfer will be
discussed by Zharikov et al. and Rotman for energy transfer and
dopant-defect interactions, respectively; it will also be crucial in
understanding cerium-doped scintilla tors, neodymium-chromium lasers,
and up-conversion fiber lasers. As another example, phonon-induced
non-radiative relaxation will appear in every chapter in this book.