Liquid-phase epitaxy of Pr: LiYF4 for waveguide lasers

To achieve miniaturized laser sources based on dielectric materials for integrated photonic devices, this thesis deals with the development of visible compact laser sources based on rare earth doped fluoride waveguides. Several spectroscopic characterizations are detailed, and modified Judd-Ofelt theories were applied to the praseodymium ion, leading to a better description of the visible emission properties. The main part of this work is about the growth of fluoride crystals, using the Czochralski technique to grow bulk crystals, and the liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) to grow layers. This liquid phase epitaxy technique has been optimized to grow high quality fluoride layers, leading to the first visible compact lasers from layers activated with Pr3+, and efficient infrared lasing was obtained using Tm3+. These results are very promising for the integration of more complex laser systems.