Fiber Lasers Cut Into New Industries
In all lasers, a substance is stimulated to make the laser beam. This substance is called the active gain medium. In fiber lasers, the active gain medium is the optical fiber itself, and the glass, plastic or quartz fiber is doped with rare-earth elements such as erbium, ytterbium, neodymium, dysprosium, praseodymium and thulium. Erbium- and ytterbium-doped fibers are most common.
Fiber lasers have been used mostly in industrial materials processing. One of the most important technical...
Photonics Spectra, May 2009