Growth, spectroscopic and laser properties of Yb:SrY(BO/sub 3/)/sub 3/ for fast lasers

Among potential materials like: KY(WO/sub 4/)-KYW, KGd(WO/sub 4/)-KGW, Y/sub 3/Al/sub 5/O/sub 12/-YAG, glass doped with ytterbium for ultra-fast laser BOYS turns out to have the broadest emission spectrum. However Yb doped glass exhibits very large emission bandwidth but its poor thermal properties and extremely low emission cross section constrains the use of glass for such application. From this point of view ytterbium doped Sr (BOYS) crystal turned out to be very attractive, generating 58 fs pulses. The material melts congruently in relatively low temperature 1400/spl deg/C making easy the growth of large boules with high optical quality by the Czochralski method. We obtained BOYS crystals 15-18 mm in diam. and 40-50 mm long. Spectroscopic measurements of Yb(10%):BOYS revealed absorption band with maximum around 975.5 nm and bandwidth 10 nm what is much higher than in YAG and is suitable for diode pumping. Absorption spectra in the short wavelength region of BOYS and BOYS:Yb were measured.