Multicomponent Rare Earth-Doped Phosphate Glasses for Compact Lasers and Amplifiers

Thanks to its very high solubility of laser-active rare earth ions and outstanding thermo-mechanical properties, phosphate glass host represents a genuine alternative to the more traditional and employed silica glass platform to develop compact active devices, such as lasers and amplifiers. In particular, multicomponent phosphate glasses can withstand up to 10(21) rare earth ions/cm(3), typically about 50 times more than the silica glass matrix, without showing clustering effects. In this work we will report the ongoing activities and the recent results obtained by our research group on the design, processing and characterization of novel Er-, Nd- and Yb-doped custom phosphate glasses to be used as active medium for compact laser systems and optical amplifiers.