Ceramic planar waveguide structures for amplifiers and lasers

Ceramic and crystalline weakly guiding optical fibres with the core – cladding refractive index difference of 10^-2 – 10^-4 are fabricated by a hot pressing method. The waveguides with one or several cores for operation in the spectral range 0.2 – 5 μm are produced. The waveguides are based on CaF₂, SrF₂, and BaF₂ ceramics and crystals and their solid solutions doped with trivalent Pr, Nd, Tb, Dy, Yb, Ho, Er, and Tm ions, as well as on LiF ceramics and crystals with colour centres. The first results of investigation of the lasing properties of ceramic SrF₂ : NdF waveguides under diode pumping are presented, and the prospects of further investigation are discussed.