Near and medium infrared optical fiber lasers and emerging applications

Laser cavities emitting in the near and medium infrared wavelength range, made of rare earth doped optical fibers and suitable pairs of integrated mirrors, are used in a large number of applications. Nowadays, the efficient employment of near and medium infrared laser beams is largely widespread in the field of m*aterial processing, surgery, directed energy, remote sensing, spectroscopy, imaging, and so on. In a lot of cases, the high conversion efficiency, the excellent beam quality, the compactness and, the good heat dissipation capability make fiber lasers competitive and attractive with respect to other light sources, such as ion-doped crystal and bulk glass lasers, optical parametric oscillators, semiconductor and gas lasers. The paper aims to recall and/or briefly illustrate a few among the numerous strategies recently followed by research laboratories and industries to obtain laser sources based on rare earth doped optical fibres. A recall on the host materials and the dopants employed for their construction, and the corresponding applications is given, too. Moreover, an example of near infrared (NIR) fiber optic laser development, by employing available on market components is illustrated by underlining the possibility to easily obtain high beam quality.