Lasing action at around 1.9 mu m from an ultrafast laser inscribed Tm-doped glass waveguide

We report optical guiding and laser action at around 1:9 µm in a Tm3+-doped fluorogermanate glass waveguide fabricated using ultrafast laser inscription. A monolithic laser cavity was constructed by directly butt coupling dielectric mirrors to each facet of the 6:0mm long Tm3+-doped waveguide. When the waveguide was pumped by a Ti:sapphire laser tuned to 791nm, laser oscillation was achieved at around 1:91 µm. This waveguide laser exhibited a maximum slope efficiency of 6% and a maximum output power of 32mW when pumped with 620mW of incident laser power. © 2011 Optical Society of America.