Challenges of Fabricating and Coating Laser Crystals

Laser crystals can be considered the “engines” of solid-state lasers. They are used for gain media, for frequency conversion, and to manage laser characteristics and performance. Like the engine of a car, if laser crystals are clean and working properly, they allow the larger system to operate at a higher level. In the case of a laser system, operating at a high level means creating a stable beam and reaching high optical powers. Some advantages of laser crystals over other solid-state gain media are that they typically offer less absorption, a narrower emission bandwidth, higher transition cross-sections, and higher thermal conductivity. Laser crystals are critical for enabling a wide variety of applications including laser materials processing, laser surgery, sensing, defense applications like rangefinding, and more.