Solid State Lasers

This volume contains the lectures and seminars presented at the NATO Ad vanced Study Institute on "Solid State Lasers: New Developments and Appli cations" the fifteenth course of the Europhysics School of Quantum Electronics, held under the supervision of the Quantum Electronics Division of the European Physical Society. The Institute was held at Elba International Physics Center, Marciana Marina, Elba Island, Tuscany, Italy, August 31 -September 11, 1992. The Europhysics School of Quantum Electronics was started in 1970 with the aim of providing instruction for young researchers and advanced students al ready engaged in the area of quantum electronics or wishing to switch to this area from a different background. Presently the school is under the direction of Professors F.T. Arecchi and M. Inguscio, University of Florence, and Prof. H. Walther, University of Munich, and has its headquarters at the National Insti tute of Optics (INO), Florence, Italy. Each time the directors choose a subject of particular interest, alternating fundamental topics with technological ones, and ask colleagues specifically competent in a given area to take the scientific responsibility for that course.

Proceedings of a NATO ASI held in Tuscany, Italy, August 31-September 11, 1992

Resonator Designs for High Brightness Solid-State Lasers.- Defining and Measuring Laser Beam Quality.- Mode-Locked Solid State Lasers.- High Power Rod, Slab, and Tube Lasers.- Solid-State Laser Materials: Basic Properties and New Developments.- Quantum Confined Semiconductor Lasers.- Diode Pumped Solid State Lasers.- Generation of Visible Light with Diode Pumped Solid State Lasers.- High Power Diode Lasers.- Efficient Narrowband Optical Parametric Oscillators of Beta-Barium-Borate (BBO) and Lithium-Triborate (LBO).- Travelling Wave Parametric Generation of Highly Coherent Femtosecond Pulses Tunable from 750 to 3000 nm.- Frequency Conversion of PS-Pulses: Tunable Pulses from the UV to the Near Infrared.- Quasi-Three-Level Lasers.- Er, Tm, Ho: YLF Lasers in Astigmatically Compensated Resonators.- Color Center Lasers: State of the Art and Recent Developments.- Fibre Lasers.- The Role of Solid State Lasers in Soft-X-Ray Projection Lithography.- Second Harmonic Generation and its Application to High Resolution Spectroscopy of Atomic Hydrogen.- Diode Lasers and Metrology.- Semiconductor Diode Lasers in Atomic Spectroscopy.- Overtone Molecular Spectroscopy with Diode Lasers.- Optical Frequency Metrology with Solid State Lasers.- Frequency Stabilized TI:Sapphire Laser for High Resolution Spectroscopy of Atomic Hydrogen.