Energy scaling in 3 micron erbium-based lasers

Author

Shori, Ramesh K.

Author_Institution

Electr. Eng. Dept., California Univ., Los Angeles, CA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

27-28 Oct. 2003

Abstract

Laser emission in the 3-μm region is particular interest for clinical applications because of strong absorption in liquid water and hydroxyapatite, two of the major components that account for as much as 60-80% of the bulk composition of soft and hard (i.e. bones, enamel in teeth) tissues, respectively. For surgical application, short pulses on the order of few tens of nanoseconds are desirable in order to minimize the thermal damage to the surrounding tissue. In addition to clinical applications, Q-switched 3-μm lasers are also of great interest for some military applications where the 3-μm lasers can act as the pump sources for OPOs to generate continuously tunable emission in the 3-14 μm region.

Keywords

Q-switching; bone; erbium; high-speed optical techniques; laser applications in medicine; light sources; optical parametric oscillators; optical pumping; 3 to 14 micron; Er; Q-switching; bulk composition; clinical application; energy scaling; erbium-based lasers; hydroxyapatite; laser emission; liquid water; military application; nanosecond; short pulse; surgical application; thermal damage; tunable emission; Absorption; Bones; Laser applications; Laser excitation; Laser surgery; Pump lasers; Teeth; Tunable circuits and devices;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, 2003. LEOS 2003. The 16th Annual Meeting of the IEEE

ISSN

1092-8081

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7888-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LEOS.2003.1253079

Filename

1253079