OPTICAL CRYSTALS

Optical crystals are mainly grown in laboratories and therefore are called synthetic crystals, in opposition to natural crystals that can be found directly in the nature.

Each type of crystal shows specific optical properties, that leads to active modification of light that is passing through them. These above characteristics are the reason why they are useful in many different photonics applications.

TWO MAIN OPTICAL CRYSTALS TYPES

Two main type of light modification can be sort out of optical crystals that correspond to two main crystal types:

Laser crystals

Laser crystals, are synthetic crystals specially design to be used in Laser. They are an optical gain medium, meaning crystals will amplify light going through it. Due to their good thermal dissipation characteristics, they are able to cope with the high power generated by lasers.

Laser crystals are widely used in diode pumping lasers, as an amplifier of the diode output light. Most current laser crystals includes : nd:YAG, Ti:Sapphire and Er:YAG.

Naming of the crystal follow below pattern :