This course provides an overview of the design, performance characteristics and the current state of the art of solid state lasers and devices. The course reviews the laser-relevant properties of key solid state materials, and discusses the design principles for flashlamp pumped and diode-pumped solid state lasers in cw, pulsed, Q-switched and modelocked operation. Solid state media emphasized include Nd and Yb-doped crystals but mid-IR materials such as Tm, Ho and Er-doped fluorides and oxides will be addressed as well. The course will cover the fundamental scaling laws for power, energy and beam quality for various geometries of the gain medium (rod, slab, disk, waveguide) and pumping arrangements (side and end-pumped) and provides an overview of the state-of-the art of solid state lasers. This includes a review of the design and performance of fiber lasers/amplifiers and their comparison to bulk solid state lasers. An overview of the state-of the art of optically pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSL) will also be given. <p> </p> Important technical advances (such as diode pump developments) that allowed the technology to mature into diverse industrial and biomedical OEM devices as well as high power and scientific applications will be highlighted along with some remaining design and performance challenges. Topics also include nonlinear frequency conversion techniques, such as harmonic generation, Raman scattering and parametric processes, commonly used in solid state lasers to extend operation to alternative spectral regimes. The course includes an overview of currently available solid state laser products and their industrial and scientific applications.

This course provides an overview of the design, performance characteristics, the current state of the art, and the applications of industrial ultrafast lasers used in micro-processing. The course reviews the properties of Yb-doped and Nd-doped gain materials used to generate pulse durations in the range of 300 fs to 15 ps, and discusses the design principles for modelocked solid state and fiber MOPA architectures to realize average output powers of up to hundreds of Watts with pulse energies in the range of 1 µJ to several mJ. The course will cover the design of SESAM modelocked oscillators, the fundamentals of Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA), including design rules for pulse stretching and compression devices, as well as frequency conversion to the green and ultraviolet spectral range. Topics will also include the interaction of fs/ps pulses with materials during laser processing and a review of the optimum fluences and maximum ablation rates in the IR, Green and UV for more than 25 materials used in industrial manufacturing. The course concludes with an overview of currently available laser products and their industrial applications and a summary of recent R&D results.