Asolid-state laser is alaser that uses again medium that is asolid, rather than aliquid as indye lasers or agas as ingas lasers.^[1]Semiconductor-based lasers are also in the solid state, but are generally considered as a separate class from solid-state lasers, calledlaser diodes.

Generally, the active medium of a solid-state laser consists of aglass orcrystalline "host" material, to which is added a "dopant" such asneodymium,chromium,erbium,^[2]thulium^[3] orytterbium.^[4] Many of the common dopants arerare-earth elements, because the excited states of such ions are not strongly coupled with the thermal vibrations of their crystal lattices (phonons), and theiroperational thresholds can be reached at relatively low intensities oflaser pumping.

There are many hundreds of solid-state media in which laser action has been achieved, but relatively few types are in widespread use. Of these, probably the most common isneodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG). Neodymium-doped glass (Nd:glass) and ytterbium-doped glasses orceramics are used at very high power levels (terawatts) and high energies (megajoules), for multiple-beaminertial confinement fusion.

The first material used for lasers wassynthetic ruby crystals.Ruby lasers are still used for a few applications, but they are no longer common because of their low power efficiencies. At room temperature, ruby lasers emit only short pulses of light, but atcryogenic temperatures they can be made to emit a continuous train of pulses.^[5]

The second solid-state gain medium wasuranium-dopedcalcium fluoride. Peter Sorokin and Mirek Stevenson atIBM's laboratories inYorktown Heights (US) experimented with this material in the 1960s and achieved lasing at 2.5 μm shortly afterMaiman'sruby laser.

Some solid-state lasers can be madetunable by using intracavityetalons,prisms,gratings, or a combination of these.^[6]Titanium-doped sapphire is widely used for its broad tuning range, 660 to 1080nanometers.Alexandrite lasers are tunable from 700 to 820 nm and yield higher-energy pulses than titanium-sapphire lasers because of the gain medium's longer energy storage time and higherdamage threshold.

Solid statelasing media are typicallyoptically pumped, using either aflashlamp orarc lamp, or bylaser diodes.^[1]Diode-pumped solid-state lasers tend to be much more efficient and have become much more common as the cost of high-powersemiconductor lasers has decreased.^[7]

Mode locking of solid-state lasers andfiber lasers has wide applications as large-energy ultra-short pulses can be obtained.^[1] There are two types of saturable absorbers that are widely used as mode lockers: SESAM,^[8][9][10] and SWCNT.Graphene has also been used.^[11][12][13] These materials use a nonlinear optical behavior calledsaturable absorption to make a laser create short pulses.

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Solid state lasers are used in research, medical treatment, and military applications, among others.

• Disk laser
• Laser construction
• Solid-state dye lasers

• Koechner, Walter (1999).Solid-State Laser Engineering (5th ed.). Springer.ISBN 978-3-540-65064-5.

• Solid-state lasers

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