Del Mar Photonics - Mavericks Cr:Forsterite lasers

Review by Thomas M Spinka (pdf) ECE 455 12/13/2004

1. Introduction

The discovery of the solid-state ruby laser by Theodore Maiman in 1960 opened the door

the gain medium for the ruby laser provided a model for the discovery of the broadly tunable

solid-state laser in alexandrite in 1979. The discovery of the emerald laser in the early 1980s led

to a flurry of research focused on finding new laser crystals and new ions that would lase in

commonly-used host crystals. These research efforts led to the discoveries of numerous laser

This fascinating laser system has tremendous potential for applications in near infrared imaging,

communications, and semiconductor inspection.

In this paper, I will first review the forsterite crystal structure, properties and growth

processes, and then move into the early history of the laser system, covering the discovery of the

Cr:forsterite laser and the first demonstration of continuous-wave and mode-locked operation, as

well as some important advances in Cr:forsterite laser output power and efficiency. I will then

conduct a more in-depth study of lasing in continuous-wave (cw) mode, reviewing the laser

that these effects can be minimized. In the following section, I will present an in-depth study of

mode-locked operation of Cr:forsterite lasers by investigating several papers presented starting in

1991. This section will also proceed chronologically, including active mode-locking,

synchronous pumping, additive-pulse mode-locking, and mode-locking with Semiconductor

Saturable-Absorber Mirrors. I will close the paper by reviewing some applications that take

advantage of some of the unique characteristics of Cr:forsterite lasers, including biological

imaging, remote sensing, semiconductor inspection, and optical communications.

2. Forsterite Crystal Growth and Properties

Synthetic forsterite can be grown from a seed crystal using the Czochralski method. This

process for growing crystals is mainly used to produce high-quality low-impurity semiconductor

wafers, but can be adapted to grow many types of laser crystals as well. Growing the laser crystal

for the Cr:forsterite laser involves dipping a small forsterite seed crystal into a vat of liquefied

magnesium and silicate with a small doping concentration of chromium and slowly removing the

crystal from the vat while precisely controlling the temperature, pressure and rotation speed of

the pulled crystal and its surroundings to form a very pure and low-impurity crystalline structure.

typically cut to precise dimensions on the order of a few cm long and with a physical crosssection

reduce photon loss at the boundaries of the crystal during lasing.

3. History

On March 28, 1988, Vladimir Petričević and his colleagues first reported lasing in a

groundwork for all of the Cr:forsterite research to come. They provide an absorption spectrum

and a fluorescence spectrum from 300 nm to 1500 nm, and report lasing at 1235 nm with a

bandwidth of about 22 nm. However, due to the repetition rate of the Nd:YAG pump laser they

used, the lasing they achieved was not true cw, but gain-switched lasing. However, soon

thereafter, the same research group achieved true cw lasing in the Cr:forsterite at room

increase the tunable range of the Cr:forsterite laser to 1167-1345 nm with a full-width at halfmax

Two years later, A. Seas and coworkers reported the first mode-locked operation of the

These pulse-lengths were not spectacularly short, but the purpose of this first demonstration of

mode-locking was not to break any pulse-length records. It was merely a demonstration that

mode-locking in a Cr:forsterite laser is possible and effective. In fact, only a year later,

technique, they narrowed the width of the pulse to 150 fs. By cryogenically cooling the

Cr:forsterite laser, they were able to achieve average output powers of up to 2.8 W. Only months

later, near the beginning of 1993, the length of the shortest pulse demonstrated on a Cr:forsterite

Ti:sapphire and Nd:YAG laser as pumps, and showed that lasing was possible for all three pump

sources. The natural next step towards making the solid-state Cr:forsterite laser an all-solid-state

becoming an issue as the pump power increases to more than a few watts. This effect came

loading theoretically. They also obviously applied the theory in obtaining the highest roomtemperature

cw lasing in Cr:forsterite to date.

As the improvements to the Cr:forsterite laser system became more and more pronounced

through the 10 years after its initial discovery, applications of the laser system became

extension of this group improved this application significantly to be competitive with a more

research will probably be the release, on November 9, 2004, of a complete, all-solid-state

available complete laser system that provides 2 nJ pulses on the order of 65 fs long, scientists

will be able to focus on applications. Del Mar Ventures also offers an amplification system

which can produce similar length pulses with a peak power of 1 –2 TW. Possible applications of

these extremely high power systems include condensed matter imaging and micromachining.

4. Continuous-Wave Operation

To understand the Cr:forsterite laser more fully, it is instructive to consider specific

systems in more detail than we have so far. We will first examine the laser system employed by

this demonstration is, in fact, quite simple. The crystal, a 9 mm × 9 mm × 4.5 mm parallelepiped

grown by Electronic Materials Research Laboratory of the Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co., Ltd.,

acts as the gain medium for the system. It is placed at the center of a stable resonator cavity

formed by two spherical mirrors of radius 30 cm placed 20 cm apart. The high-reflectivity mirror

was dielectric-coated to be 99.9% reflecting in the 1150 – 1250 nm range, while the output

coupler was 98% reflective over this range. Both mirrors transmit the 532 nm pump wavelength.

The laser system was pumped by a frequency-doubled Q-switched Nd:YAG laser operating at a

10 Hz repetition rate, providing pumping at 532 nm. The FWHM of the pump pulses was 10 ns

and the observed threshold pump energy was 2.2 mJ. As the pump pulse energy increased

beyond the threshold value, a single output pulse from the Cr:forsterite crystal was observed.

The pulse energy increased smoothly with the pump pulse energy beyond the threshold value.

Interestingly, the time delay between the pump pulse and the output pulse decreased with

increasing pulse power. This is easily explained by noting that the cavity must have a very low

single-pass gain, which means that it takes many round-trips through the cavity to build up the

laser intensity to the lasing threshold level. This explanation is supported by noting that lasing

was extremely sensitive to even a slight cavity misalignment or the insertion of a glass plate into

the cavity, which introduces about an 8% loss. The measured slope efficiency is rather low, at

1.4%, which also supports the hypothesis of a high-loss cavity.

As the next step beyond the pulsed operation of the laser demonstrated in their 1988

article, Petričević and his research group attempted and attained true cw lasing with the

on obtaining pulsed operation, as evidenced by the Nd:Glass laser. The setup for this experiment

was significantly different than that of the discovery paper. A new Cr:forsterite crystal (6 mm ×

laser cavity with spherical mirrors of radius 5 cm. The crystal was sandwiched between two

copper plates to facilitate heat dissipation. The mirrors were coated to be mostly transmissive to

the pump wavelength of 1064 nm, while maintaining high reflectivity for the Cr:forsterite lasing

region. The output coupler for this experiment was 99% reflective, while the input mirror was

99.9% reflective over the entire lasing region from 1200 – 1400 nm. The pump was a cwoperated

Nd:YAG, chopped to a duty cycle of 10%. When the pump laser was unchopped, the

Cr:forsterite laser operated at 40% reduced output power due to thermal effects. The lasing

threshold occurred at 1.25 W of input power, and the measured slope efficiency increased

dramatically to 6.8%. In this paper, Petričević estimates the stimulated emission cross section

difference is explained by realizing that there must be other small loss mechanisms at work.

Vehicles for these losses include excited-state absorption and nonradiative relaxation, which

implies that the fluorescence lifetime is not a good approximation for the radiative lifetime used

to calculate the theoretical emission cross section. They also quote the lasing wavelength and

FWHM at 1244 nm and 12 nm, respectively.

In the next several years, great strides were made in optimizing the Cr:forsterite laser.

Once again, Petričević’s group made significant contributions in optimizing the slope efficiency

38%, which is one of the highest of any tunable solid-state laser system to that time. Another

research group, Carrig and Pollock, demonstrated much higher output power at cryogenic

at 77 K, tunable from 1200 – 1320 nm, fully 10 times higher than described in several previous

papers. However, Carrig and Pollock mention that the output power decreases to about 35% of

the cryogenic power level when the system is run at room temperature, which is much closer to

that obtained previously.

To that point, the only pump laser used was a Nd:YAG laser. However, in 1993, Carrig

and Pollock did a comprehensive study of three pump lasers for the Cr:forsterite laser system,

Nd:YAG laser at 1064 nm and 77 K, Carrig and Pollock obtained 2.8 W of cw power from the

Cr:forsterite laser with a 13% output coupler. At this wavelength about 78% of the incident

pump power was absorbed by the crystal. It would not have been unlikely to begin seeing

saturation effects at these power levels, but no such output power leveling was observed for

pump powers up to 12 W. Less input power was available from the other two pump lasers, and

hence, the output power of the Cr:forsterite laser was also significantly lower than that for the

Nd:YAG pump laser. For 4.4 W of incident power at around 750 nm from the Ti:sapphire laser,

the output power was 0.64 W with a 10% output coupler, and for 4.4 W of incident power from a

krypton ion laser at any of its dominant output wavelengths (676 nm, 647 nm, and others), the

Cr:forsterite laser had an output power of 0.32 W with a 7% transmissive output coupler. As the

temperature of operation was raised from 77 K to room temperature, thermal effects began to

dominate the output power of the Cr:forsterite laser. For a Ti:sapphire pump, Carrig and Pollock

could not obtain lasing at powers greater than 220 to 270 K, dependent on the pump wavelength

and pump power. Similarly, they could not obtain Cr:forsterite lasing above 225 K for more than

6 – 7 seconds, after which the initial 40 mW of output power faded to zero. One of the major

goals for this investigation was to determine the feasibility of diode-pumping. The conclusion

they drew was that diode pumping is feasible, but some modifications to the chromium doping

concentration of the laser crystal would be necessary, and the pumping may be inefficient due to

weak absorption at diode-accessible wavelengths.

Several years later, in 1997, a group from Cornell University demonstrated a diodepumped

AlGaInP semiconductor diode lasers which each emit about 400 mW of output power at around

absorption band that peaks at 740 nm that exhibits absorbance of about 6 times that at the

wavelength of a Nd:YAG pump at 1064 nm. Since there were no commercially available

semiconductor diode lasers operating in this wavelength range, AlGaInP was chosen because it

lases at 680 nm, where the absorbance is still 3 times that at 1064 nm. The maximum total

power available at the forsterite crystal was about 1.2 W, and up to 65% of this was absorbed by

the crystal. Because of the relatively small amount of available pump power, using an output

coupler with a transmission coefficient of more than 2% dropped the gain in the laser cavity

below the threshold value. However, lasing was achieved for both a 1% and 2% output coupler,

exhibiting 1% and 2% efficiency, respectively. These extremely low efficiencies resulted in a

maximum output power of the Cr:forsterite laser of only 5 mW. However, as was the goal of this

demonstrating this method, they achieved 1.1 W of unchopped cw output power at room

temperature with a slope efficiency of 26%. By making a few useful assumptions, Zhavoronkov

and his coworkers were able to model the distribution of thermal energy in the Cr:forsterite

crystal, and optimize the laser cavity to match the thermal lensing properties of the crystal as a

function of pump power. The assumptions they made in order to develop this theory are: 1) that

heat flow in the laser crystal is radial, which is a reasonable assumption if the pump laser beam is

centered on the crystal. 2) that the thermal conductivity of the material, the absorption

coefficient at the pump wavelength and the amount of absorbed pump power per unit volume of

material that leads to heating of the rod are all constants over the temperature and pump power

ranges considered. 3) that the spatial intensity profile of the pump beam is a cylindrically

equations and the ABCD matrix formalism, they were able to derive a method for determining

the optimal asymmetrical location of the laser crystal within the cavity. The reason that the

optimal position is not the center of the cavity is that, due to the distribution of the absorbed heat

energy in the forsterite crystal, the change in material index of refraction as a function of

temperature acts as a focusing lens.

By 1998, thermal loading in the cw Cr:forsterite laser system was a topic of high interest.

Alphan Sennaroglu made significant contributions in several papers published in February and

efficiency via improvements to the laser crystal properties, radiative cooling, and chopping of the

solid state lasers in general, of which Cr:forsterite is one. It presents a highly detailed theoretical

model of power performance of solid-state lasers subject to lifetime thermal loading. Another

paper that was published in November of 2001 also focused on issue of thermal loading. Ivanov

which was shown to be a large factor leading to the decrease in output power of thermally

constrained Cr:forsterite lasers. In fact, thermal effects in the laser crystal are still a major focus

of current research today.

5. Mode-Locked Operation

Laser mode-locking is a group of techniques for producing extremely short pulses from a

laser. Mode-locking is divided into two major categories: active mode-locking and passive

mode-locking. Short pulses are useful in many application, including but not limited to optical

coherence tomography (OCT) for biomedical imaging, high-speed communications, remote

sensing applications, and others. The first demonstration of short pulses using a Cr:forsterite

Cr:forsterite due to the similarities between them, they achieve synchronous pumping modelocking

and active mode-locking. Synchronous pumping is the simplest way to achieve modelocking

in a laser system. In this technique, the active gain medium of the driven laser is

modulated at a frequency that equals the round-trip time of the active laser cavity resonator as

well as the frequency of the mode-locked pump source. In this case, the pump laser was a cw

mode-locked Nd:YAG laser oscillating in a 1.8 m cavity, which corresponds to an 83 MHz

repetition rate. When the Cr:forsterite laser cavity was length-matched to the Nd:YAG laser

cavity to within ±5 μm, the Cr:forsterite output pulse length was less than 300 ps. The minimum

pulse length of 260 ps was obtained for an exactly equal cavity size, while the pulse length was

shown to decrease slightly for a very slight mismatch in cavity length of 1 μm. The output

wavelength in this configuration is continuously tunable from 1195 – 1295 nm, limited by the

spectral characteristics of the mirrors used in the experiment. The maximum output power

observed for synchronous pumping was 175 mW at 1232 nm for 2.4 W of absorbed pump power,

which corresponds to a slope efficiency of 12.5% with a threshold of 0.7 W of absorbed pump

power. The other technique for mode-locking the Cr:forsterite laser demonstrated in this paper

was acousto-optic modulation, which falls into the active mode-locking category. The authors

placed a Brewster acousto-optic modulator and mode-locker driver from the Coherent Laser

Products Group of Coherent, Inc. into the Cr:forsterite laser cavity near the output coupler. The

pump laser was operated in cw mode (no mode-locking). By driving the modulator at ~76 MHz

and adjusting the cavity length to ~1.97m (the round-trip distance for the light to travel in this

amount of time), the pulse width can be decreased to 50 ps. With the cavity slightly misaligned,

shorter pulses were observed, but with the addition of satellite pulses as well. The pulse width

for the shortest observed pulses was approximately 20 ps. With this cavity configuration, the

output was tunable from 1204 – 1277 nm, and produced 120 mW at 1227 nm for an absorbed

pump power of 2.4 W. This represents a slope efficiency of 9.1% with a threshold of 0.9 W of

absorbed pump power.

Nd:YAG, Nd:glass, Nd:YLF and other laser systems. APM is generally established by sending

part of the laser output beam into an optical fiber. An intensity-dependent mirror returns the

output to the cavity, but with slight modifications. The leading edge of the pulse is redshifted,

while the trailing edge is blueshifted. If the cavity lengths are adjusted properly, the pulse is

reinjected into the laser cavity such that the leading edge of the pulse adds in phase with the

pulse propagating in the cavity, and the trailing edge destructively interferes, effectively

decreasing the intensity of the pulse. As the pulse propagates in the cavity, this effect continues

Sennaroglu and his research team used this technique to obtain pulses 2 orders of magnitude

shorter than the previous shortest pulse. They demonstrated a system that gave a stable train of

150 fs pulses with an average usable power of up to 63 mW at a repetition rate of 82 MHz. This

corresponds to an instantaneous peak pulse power of about 5 kW. In this paper, they

demonstrated the feasibility of producing femtosecond pulses with the Cr:forsterite laser in a

convincing fashion. This opened the door to applications such as biological imaging via OCT

and high-speed optical communications relays.

Another significant advance in the mode-locking field was the use of Semiconductor

Saturable Absorber Mirrors (SESAMs). This type of mode-locking is sometimes also called

colliding pulse mode-locking (CPM). The simplified version of how CPM produces short pulses

is that two electromagnetic waves propagating in opposite directions interfere with each other

within the saturable absorber. Where the two waves constructively interfere, the saturable

absorber can saturate, producing a standing wave in the absorber. This, in turn, narrows,

stabilizes and shortens the incident laser pulse, which can the be coupled to the output. Is a

SESAM, the saturable absorber is constructed in the same device as the semiconductor mirror

such that as the wave propagates through the saturable absorber and is reflected from the mirror,

mode, the Cr:forsterite crystal in the laser cavity had its peak intensity at 1290 nm, so Zhang and

his colleagues attempted to fabricate a semiconductor mirror/quantum well (saturable absorber)

quantum well occurred around 1290 nm, they fabricated the semiconductor device using

molecular beam epitaxy. By using this device as one of the laser cavity mirrors, Zhang obtained

a pulse width of 36 fs with a bandwidth of 50 nm at 1295 nm. The maximum average output

power with a 2% transmission output coupler was 150 mW. The pump laser for this setup was a

Further research into mode-locking and optimization of existing techniques beyond 1997

factor of 3 longer than the shortest laser pulse ever created. Also, 54 fs pulses with a peak power

of 1 GW have been demonstrated by stretching the pulse, amplifying it, and then compressing the

released a commercially available complete all-solid-state mode-locked Cr:forsterite laser

produces pulses of about 60 fs and provides an average output power of 280 mW at a repetition

mrad. A complimentary system, the Jaws Terawatt System, runs at a repetition rate of 10 Hz and

produces pulses 60 – 80 fs long with peak output powers of 1 – 2 TW. The applications of this

type of system are rapidly expanding and developing.

6. Current Research and Applications

Current research is taking place mostly in two main areas. The goal of the first is to

reduce the heating effects in the Cr:forsterite laser crystal when it is operated in cw mode. This

is important for increasing the possible output power of this laser system at room temperature.

The second main research topic is increasing the efficiency and attainable output power for

mode-locked systems, as well as increasing the repetition rate for today’s highest-power

Cr:forsterite lasers. One highly studied aspect of this is reducing or compensating for the

dispersion effects of the laser crystal. However, perhaps the most research relating to

Cr:forsterite lasers is not into the laser system itself, but in applications of these lasers.

are preferred over longer pulses because the available bandwidth of shorter pulses is far superior

to that of long pulses. Also, Cr:forsterite is preferred over other laser systems because it lases at

around 1.3 μm, which allows for much deeper penetration into a biological sample than does

Ti:sapphire at 800 nm and other lasers systems at shorter or significantly longer wavelengths.

The Ti:sapphire laser is limited by scattering while laser systems beyond 2 μm are quickly

absorbed by water. Cr:forsterite sits neatly in the middle, and allows for the optimal balance

modification that instead of collecting the information one pixel at a time, the traditional OCT

method, and obtaining resolution limited by the laser spot size, they increased the spot size of the

This video-speed image acquisition, even for significantly lower resolution could be invaluable

in large-scale and real-time observations of biological samples. Continuing the trend, Bordenave

research in this area is almost certain to bring major advances in resolution, speed and dynamic

range.

near or at 1276 nm, a wavelength of zero material dispersion, allowing for the maximum

information capacity of a fiber to be exploited. Interestingly, the extremely short pulses

demonstrated in Cr:forsterite present possibilities for very high data transmission rates, as well.

The wavelength of operation of the Cr:forsterite laser also allows for eye-safe ranging and small

band-gap semiconductor inspection. One of the most-promising applications is micromachining.

Extremely short (tens to hundreds of fs) high-power laser pulses transfer much of their energy to

only a few particles, which immediately makes the phase transition to a high-temperature plasma

without significantly disturbing the surrounding particles. The plasma material is then quickly

ejected from the area, leaving very little residue. This is a significant improvement over highpower

ns pulses, which tend to leave slag along the cut edge and, depending on the material

being cut, can deposit detrimental amounts of heat in the material which can cause cracking or

other unfavorable thermal effects. This technique would be useful from dentist drills to

machining finer holes in automobile fuel injectors resulting in cleaner combustion and better fuel

economy. Other possible applications include studying chemical reactions as they occur. The

extremely rapid nature of chemical reactions has thus far defeated any attempts to study them in

depth as they are occurring. However, with the extremely short pulses dipping to only a few

femtoseconds, characterization of chemical reactions may be within reach. It is certain that the

applications for Cr:forsterite and other maturing laser systems are only beginning to be realized.

The future holds great promise for laser applications in our world and beyond.

7. References

1. E. Abraham, E. Bordenave, N. Tsurumachi, G. Jonusauskas, J. Oberlé, C. Rullière, and A.

Mito. Real-Time Two-Dimensional Imaging in Scattering Media by Use of a Femtosecond

2. E. Bordenave, E. Abraham, G. Jonusauskas, N. Tsurumachi, J. Oberlé, C. Rullière, P. E.

Minot, M. Lassègues, and J. E. Surlève Bazeille. Wide-Field Optical Coherence Tomography:

Imaging of Biological Tissues. Applied Optics. 41:2059-2064. 2002.

3. B. E. Bouma, G. J. Tearney, I. P. Bilinsky, B. Golubovic, and J. G. Fujimoto. Self-Phase-

Modulated Kerr-Lens Mode-Locked Cr:Forsterite Laser Source for Optical Coherence

Tomography. Optics Letters. 21:1839-1841. 1996.

4. Timothy J. Carrig and Clifford R. Pollock. Tunable, CW Operation of a Multiwatt Forsterite

Laser. Optics Letters. 16:1662-1664. 1991.

5. Timothy J. Carrig and Clifford R. Pollock. Performance of a Continuous-Wave Forsterite

Laser with Krypton Ion, Ti:Sapphire and Nd:YAG Pump Lasers. IEEE Journal of Quantum

Electronics. 29:2835-2844. 1993.

6. C. Chudoba, J. G. Fujimoto, E. P. Ippen, H. A. Haus, U. Morgner, F. X. Kärtner, V. Scheuer,

G. Angelow, and T. Tschudi. All-Solid-State Cr:Forsterite Laser Generating 14-fs Pulses at 1.3

μm. Optics Letters. 26:292-294. 2001.

7. Anatoliy Ivanov, Vladislav Shcheslavskiy, Vladislav Yakovlev, Boris Minkov, and Alexander

2001.

8. G. Jonusauskas, J. Oberlé, and C. Rullière. 54-fs, 1-GW, 1-kHz Pulse Amplification in

Cr:Forsterite. Optics Letters. 23:1918-1920. 1998.

9. T. Maiman. Stimulated Optical Radiation in Ruby. Nature. 187:493-494. 1960.

10. M. Müller, J. Squier, K. R. Wilson, and G. Brakenhoff. 3D Microscopy of Transparent

Objects Using Third-Harmonic Generation. Journal of Microscopy. 191:266-274. 1998.

11. V. Petričević, S. K. Gayen, R. R. Alfano, Kiyoshi Yamagishi, H. Anzal, and Y. Yamaguchi.

Laser Action in Chromium-Doped Forsterite. Applied Physics Letters. 52:1040-1042. 1988.

12. V. Petričević, S. K. Gayen, and R. R. Alfano. Continuous-Wave Laser Operation of

Chromium-Doped Forsterite. Optics Letters. 14:612-614. 1989.

13. V. Petričević, A. Seas, and R. R. Alfano. Slope Efficiency Measurements of a Chromium-

Doped Forsterite Laser. Optics Letters. 16:811-813. 1991.

14. Leijia Qian, Xiang Liu, and Frank Wise. Cr:Forsterite Laser Pumped by Broad-Area Laser

Diodes. Optics Letters. 22:1707-1709. 1997.

15. A. Seas, V. Petričević, and R. R. Alfano. Continuous-Wave Mode-Locked Operation of a

Chromium-Doped Forsterite Laser. Optics Letters. 16:1668-1670. 1991.

16. Alphan Sennaroglu, Timothy J. Carrig, and Clifford R. Pollock. Femtosecond Pulse

Generation by Using an Additive-Pulse Mode-Locked Chromium-Doped Forsterite Laser

Operated at 77 K. Optics Letters. 17:1216-1218. 1992.

Room Temperature. Applied Optics. 37:1062-1067. 1998.

18. Alphan Sennaroglu. Comparative Experimental Investigation of Thermal Loading in

19. Alphan Sennaroglu. Analysis and Optimization of Lifetime Thermal Loading in Continuous-

2001.

21. V. Yanovsky, Y. Pang, F. Wise, and B. I. Minkov. Generation of 25-fs Pulses from a Self-

Mode-Locked Cr:Forsterite Laser with Optimized Group-Delay Dispersion. Optics Letters.

18:1541-1543. 1993.

22. Zhigang Zhang, Kenji Torizuka, Taro Itatani, Katsuyuki Kobayashi, Takeyoshi Sugaya, and

Tadashi Nakagawa. Self-Starting Mode-Locked Femtosecond Forsterite Laser With a

Semiconductor Saturable-Absorber Mirror. Optics Letters. 22:1006-1008. 1997.

23. Nickolay Zhavoronkov, Aleksander Avtukh, and Victor Mikhailov. Chromium-Doped

Forsterite Laser with 1.1 W of Continuous-Wave Output Power at Room Temperature. Applied

Optics. 36:8601-8605. 1997.

24. http://webmineral.com/data/Forsterite.shtml

25. http://www.dmphotonics.com/mavericks brochure web.pdf