Les matériaux laser et pour l'optique non linéaire

At first this paper describes semiconductor lasers which are the breakthrough of the last ten years in the field of solid-state lasers. Laser diodes allow optical pumping of laser crystals which are discussed in the second part of this paper. Solid-state crystalline lasers produce fixed or tunable laser beams with wavelengths ranging from UV to infrared. The last sections of this paper deal with non-linear optics which allows to modify the wavelength of an incident laser beam. Several inserts deal with the scientific bases of laser and nonlinear-optics (laser operating principles, non-linear polarization, frequency conversion efficiency and phase matching), recent developments (quantum-well lasers, up-conversion lasers) and order of magnitude of the parameters involved.