A NEW TUNABLE SOLID-STATE LASER

The eighties have been a decade of rapid development for tunable solid-state lasers with progress reaching the point where tunable solid-state lasers are making headway in the marketplace and attracting the financial community's interest. In the area of laser applications, interest in tunable solid-state lasers stems from their many advantages over dye lasers. These include wide wavelength tunability, compactness, long operational lifetime, rigidity and ease of handling - all of which make them highly reliable and extremely suitable for spaceborne remote sensing, ranging, lidar and optical communication applications. In this article, we introduce a new tunable solid-state laser system: Chromium-activated forsterite (Cr**3** plus :Mg//2SiO//4), which has the potential for tunability from 850-1400nm - one of the most widely tunable laser systems in this spectral region.