It has been recognized that the monoclinic double tungstates KY(WO 4) 2 , KGd(WO 4) 2 , and KLu(WO 4) 2 possess a high potential as rare-earth-ion-doped solid-state laser materials, partly due to the high absorption and emission cross sections of rare-earth ions when doped into these materials. Besides, their high refractive indexes make these materials potentially suitable for applications that require optical gain and high power in integrated optics, with rather high integration density. We review the recent advances in the field of bulk lasers in these materials and present our work toward the demonstration of waveguide lasers and their integration with other optical structures on a chip.

Codoping KY(WO(4))(2):Yb layers with optically inert Lu and Gd ions allows a large increase of the refractive index contrast with respect to KY(WO(4))(2) substrates. This paves the way for the realization of integrated optical circuits based on this very promising material. First riblike waveguide structures have been fabricated and propagation losses below 1 dB/cm have been evaluated. A Y-junction with a splitting ratio close to 1:1 and additional losses of 1.4 dB has also been demonstrated.

High-quality monoclinic planar waveguide crystals of Tm-doped KY(WO(4))(2) were grown by liquid-phase epitaxy with several dopant concentrations and thicknesses. Waveguide lasing in the 2 mum spectral range was demonstrated in the fundamental mode. The maximum continuous-wave output power achieved was 32 mW using a Ti:sapphire laser pump near 800 nm.

We report on the fabrication of optical channel waveguides inside KY(WO 4 ) 2 crystals, both undoped and Yb-doped, for applications in compact solid-state lasers and three-dimensional photonic devices. Nonlinear absorption of femtosecond laser pulses has been employed in order to induce refractive-index changes in these crystals. The irradiation damage results in a decrease of the material density compared to the surrounding bulk. In this work, two types of buried channel waveguides have been fabricated in the KY(WO 4 ) 2 crystals. First ones (type I) were formed in the vicinity of the irradiated regions due to the presence of an induced compressive lattice strain, which causes an increase of the local refractive index. Light can be better confined in the second (type II) of channel waveguides that are created between pairs of damaged regions. For the best confined channels (type II), the propagation loss value measured at 1 mm amounted to 2-2.5 dB/cm.

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