Abstract

Solid-state lasers operating at 3 μm are of a great interest due to their numerous practical applications. Recently, the laser outputs with a high slope efficiency and high average output power were demonstrated with YLF:Er crystals. There are several upconversion and cross-relaxation processes which are well known as affecting the population inversion of Er-doped lasers. At present, these processes are investigated in detail within the framework of two-ion interaction model. Recently additional multi-ion processes were considered theoretically in [1].

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