Wide-wavelength-tunable operation of Tm:GYAP disordered crystal laser with birefringence filtering

A disordered crystal of Tm:GYAP with a doping concentration of 5at.% was designed and grown. Test results show that the fluorescence spectral half-height width of this crystal is 203nm, which implies that this crystal is capable of realizing a wide wavelength-tunable laser operation in the 2µm band. In this study, the Tm:GYAP crystal based laser with a center wavelength of 1936.2nm and a spectral width of 7.56nm had been realized by using a compact straight cavity structure. Under a pumping of 8.55W, a maximum output power of 0.841W was obtained, and the corresponding optical-to-optical conversion efficiency and the slope efficiency were 9.8% and 12.7%, respectively. In addition, the wavelength-tunable laser operation of Tm:GYAP crystal was realized for the first time by inserting a birefringent filter. The tuning range of the output laser exceeded 120nm (from 1911.8nm to 2039.5nm) even in the compact straight cavity.