Recent developments in laser glasses

Glass forming compositions including oxides, halides, oxyhalides, and chalcogenides are applicable to lasers and have greatly expanded the range of optical properties and spectroscopic parameters available to the laser designer. Many properties of interest for laser action transparency, linear and nonlinear refractive indices, and damage threshold of the host glass and the absorption spectrum, radiative and nonradiative transition probabilities, fluorescence wavelength, stimulated emission cross section, and spectroscopic inhomogeneities of the lasing ion Nd(3+) are reviewed.