In one embodiment a laser amplifier includes a light pump source that can generate light at a first wavelength or range of wavelengths. The laser amplifier further includes an optically pumped laser amplifier having a gain medium that amplifies light at a second wavelength or range of wavelengths in response to receiving generated light from the light pump source. A housing is used to at least partially surround the gain medium and hold a coolant fluid able to absorb the second wavelength or range of wavelengths.

A laser or nonlinear optical waveguide is presented that is formed from a core anisotropic crystal sandwiched by a cladding of anisotropic crystals of the same material but slightly rotated optical axes. The core and cladding crystals can be cut from the same crystal boule and bonded without adhesives between them. Because the crystals are anisotropic, the core and slightly skewed cladding crystals exhibit different refractive indexes to a propagating light beam. The difference in refractive indexes should be 1.210.sup.6 for mode confinement and 2d/*Sqrt(n.sub.core.sup.2n.sub.clad.sup.2)1.37 to achieve single mode operation in a square cross section, 1 for a planar cross section. Alternative embodiments use slightly different doping amounts in crystals to achieve the difference in refractive indexes between the core and cladding.

Apparatus and methods for producing ultrashort optical pulses are described. A high-power, solid-state, passively mode-locked laser can be manufactured in a compact module that can be incorporated into a portable instrument. The mode-locked laser can produce sub-50-ps optical pulses at a repetition rates between 200 MHz and 50 MHz, rates suitable for massively parallel data-acquisition. The optical pulses can be used to generate a reference clock signal for synchronizing data-acquisition and signal-processing electronics of the portable instrument.

In one embodiment a laser amplifier includes a light pump source that can generate light at a first wavelength or range of wavelengths. The laser amplifier further includes an optically pumped laser amplifier having a gain medium that amplifies light at a second wavelength or range of wavelengths in response to receiving generated light from the light pump source. A housing is used to at least partially surround the gain medium and hold a coolant fluid able to absorb the second wavelength or range of wavelengths.

A method and device for cooling electronics is disclosed. The device includes a doped crystal configured to resonate at a Stark manifold resonance capable of cooling the crystal to a temperature of from about 110K to about 170K. The crystal host resonates in response to input from an excitation laser tuned to exploit the Stark manifold resonance corresponding to the cooling of the crystal.

High output power and stable operation are achieved in a semiconductor laser pumped solid state laser. An LD pumped solid state laser 90 includes a solid state laser crystal 19 such as a Pr:YLF crystal, a plurality of LDs 11 that emits a pumping light beam L to pump the laser crystal 19, a resonator that resonates the light emitted from the solid state laser crystal 19, and a wavelength control means such as a narrow bandpass filter 13 to cause an emission wavelength of the pumping light beam L by the LD 11 to match an absorption peak wavelength of the solid state laser crystal 19.

A laser amplifier for a green laser pulse includes at least one gain medium doped with praseodymium and at least one gallium nitride based diode laser for pumping the gain medium. A green seed laser pulse going through the gain medium becomes an amplified green laser pulse.

A laser system may include one or more pump lasers configured to provide pump light. The laser system may include an amplifier having one or more gain media cooled below 20 C. using a liquid coolant and configured to amplify seed light having a wavelength at or greater than 2 micrometers. The laser system may include an enclosure with an atmospheric regulator to enclose at least an optical path of at least the gain media and maintain an atmosphere of dry gas.