High power solid state lasers in the near infrared

Since the early discovery of the laser, Nd:YAG crystals became one of the most used laser medium, in spite of the difficulty of processing the host material and the associated thermal problems during laser operation. As an alternative for the host material we have been developing lasers based on an alphabetic material, Li Y F4, where the Nd is one of the possible dopants. Along with the crystal growing developments we have been developing the associated laser technology, including rod preparation, pumping cavities, power supplies, cooling systems, resonator configurations and controlling of the temporal behavior of the laser regime. So far we have developed three prototypes in the pulsed regime and three in the C.W. (author)