Growth and characterization of materials for tunable lasers in the near infrared spectral region

Laser spectroscopy, crystal growth, and radiation damage research was performed. The laser spectroscopy effort focused on understanding the effects of excited state absorption processes involving pump photons. This was performed on a variety of rare earth ions in different hosts. The crystal growth and radiation damage effort focused on LiFY4 (YLF) doped with rare earth ions. The results of this work is described.