Abstract

The 3µm-transition in Er³⁺-doped solid state laser materials is well known as a suitable tool in medical surgery, because of the very short absorption length for this wavelength in biological tissue. Er: YAG^[1] and Cr, Er: YSGG^[2] with emissions at 2.94µm and 2.80µm respectively have shown very good performance with respect to this application. The energy-scheme of Erbium (Fig. 1) has many levels of similar distance. This fact is important for the high efficiency of the self-terminating 3µm-transition because upconversion effects support this laser transition by depopulating the lower laser level ⁴I_13/2 as rate equation models have shown.^[3]

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