We report the production of color centers in LiF single crystals by ultrashort high intensity laser pulses (60fs, 10 GW). An intensity threshold for color centers creation of 2 TW/cm(2) was determined, which is slightly smaller than the continuum generation threshold. We could identify a large amount of F centers that gave rise to aggregates such as F(2), F(2) (+) and F(3) (+). The proposed mechanism of formation is based on multiphoton excitation that also produce short lived F(2) (+) centers. It is also shown that it is possible to write tracks in the LiF crystals with dimensional control.
We demonstrate what we believe to be the highest efficiency obtained to date in a transversely diode-pumped Nd3+:YLiF4 slab laser operating at 1053 nm. The compact 11-cm-long laser cavity configuration is based on total internal reflection of the intracavity beam at the pump facet of the gain crystal to improve the overlap with the pump radiation. Multimode operation with 9.5 W of output power and an efficiency of 45% is obtained for 21 W of pump power in a single-pass configuration. Using a second pass through the crystal and a new mode-controlling technique, the beam quality is improved to the diffraction limit with 6.9 W of output power and 33% of optical-to-optical efficiency.
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