Suppression of excited-state absorption: A path to ultraviolet tunable solid-state lasers Academic Article

A method was investigated to suppress losses due to excited-state absorption (ESA) in ultraviolet tunable laser crystals. The terminal state for ESA can be either a higher-lying discrete level or the conduction band (CB) of a crystals. The possibility to suppress ESA at a desired wavelength or laser oscillation in rare-earth-ion-doped laser materials was considered. The results show that excited-state absorption, which prevents the realization of uv or vuv lasers in rare-earth- or transition-metal-ion-doped crystals, can be greatly reduced by applying an additional driving laser field.

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