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Transparent 0.6 at% Nd:Y2O3 ceramics were fabricated by vacuum sintering at 1550°C and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) at 1540°C. The ceramics sintered at such temperatures had good homogeneity with dense microstructures, without any residual pores and secondary phases. The in‐line transmittance reached 81.6% at 1000 nm and remained 81.1% at 650 nm. Continuous wave (CW) laser operation of an uncoated ceramic slab was evaluated. A maximum output power of 3.6 W with slope efficiency of 45.2% at 1.08 μm was obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on our recent progress of fabricating Yb3+‐doped Lu2O3 transparent ceramics for 1 μm solid‐state laser application. Well‐dispersed 3.3 at.% Yb:Lu2O3 nanopowders were synthesized using a co‐precipitation method. Without using any sintering aids, the Yb:Lu2O3 nanopowders could be densified by vacuum sintering at 1500°C/10 hours followed by HIPing at 1480°C/4 hours. Such obtained Yb:Lu2O3 ceramics had not only dense microstructure and submicron grain size of about 0.6 μm, but also in‐line transmission of 80.0% at 600 nm. Preliminary continuous wave (CW) laser experiments with an uncoated Yb:Lu2O3 ceramic slab have demonstrated highly efficient CW laser oscillation at 1079.8 nm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly transparent Y2O3 ceramics were successfully fabricated with CaO as sintering aid. The microstructure evolution, optical transmittance, hardness and thermal conductivity of the Y2O3 ceramics were investigated. It was found that doping a small amount (0.01–0.15 wt.%) of CaO could greatly improve the densification rate of Y2O3. With an optimized CaO dosage of 0.02 wt.% combined with the low temperature vacuum sintering plus hot isostatic pressing (HIP-ing), Y2O3 ceramics with in-line transmittance of 84.87% at 1200 nm and 81.4% at 600 nm were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate, to the best of our knowledge, the first direct vortex beam generation in the 3 μm spectral region by employing an Er:Y 2 O 3 ceramic laser. Controllable handedness with high purity is achieved by introducing asymmetric cavity loss and reducing the number of longitudinal modes. The average orbital angular momentum of the produced scalar vortex beam is quantitatively evaluated to be 0.95ħ for the LG 0,+1 mode and -0.94ħ for the LG 0,-1 mode. The corresponding optical spectrum is centered at 2710.8 and 2710.5 nm, respectively.