title: Rare-earth-doped silica microchip laser fabricated by sintering nanoporous glass.
abstract: We report a new method for fabricating rare-earth-doped silica glasses for laser materials obtained by sintering nanoporous silica glasses impregnated with rare-earth-doped ions. The fabricated materials have no residual pores and show good optical and mechanical properties. Good performance from a Nd3+ -doped silica microchip laser operating at 1.064 microm is successfully demonstrated, suggesting that the fabricated silica glasses have potential for use as active materials for high-power solid-state lasers.
authors.affiliation: Photon Craft Project, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Japan Science and Technology Agency, Shanghai 201800, China. xia_jinan@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Jinan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Danping
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Jianrong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.forename: Congshan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhu