The conversion of long-wave into short-wave radiation by multiphoton mechanisms is known as upconversion. During the past few years, upconversion pumped lasers have attracted much research interest because of their applications to color displays, opti...
The conversion of long-wave into short-wave radiation by multiphoton mechanisms is known as upconversion. During the past few years, upconversion pumped lasers have attracted much research interest because of their applications to color displays, optical recording, laser printing and underwater optical communications, etc. Glasses are one of the attractive hosts because they can be fabricated into optical fibers and then fiber lasers. They are also transparent in a wide optical region and can incorporate a large amount of rare-earth joins.
Mixed halide, Ge-Ga-S, tellurite, calcium-aluminate, flint and phosphate glasses doped with Tm3+ were prepared in this work. Absorption spectra were measured by UV/VIS spectrophotometer. Uupconversion fluorescences were measured by exciting samples at 800nm and their upconversion mechanisms were investigated.
700nm red upconversion fluorescences due to the 3F3 → 3H6 transition was observed in Tm3+ single doped glasses under 800nm excitation. This upconversion phenomenon was present in all glasses investigated. Two different mechanisms for the 700nm red upconversion fluorescences have been suggested depending is below 0.3mol%, 3F3 level excitation is related to the anti-Stokes excitation from the 3H4 to 3F3 level. Anti-Stokes excitation mechanism was confirmed from the linear dependence of the emission intensity on the incident pumping power and lifetimes of the 3F3 level. When the Tm3+ concentration is high, a two-photon absorption process dominates as evidenced from the quadratic dependence of the emission intensity in incident pumping power.