Thermally bonded planar waveguide lasers

A new technique for fabricating active planar waveguide devices is reported. This process, based on the thermal bonding of precision finished crystal or glass components, allows waveguides to be assembled from very dissimilar materials and could be applied to a wide range of solid state laser or other optical media. The waveguide propagation losses, inferred from the laser performance, are found to be 0.7 dB/cm for Nd:Y3Al5O12 bonded to Y3Al5O12, Nd:Y3Al5O12 bonded to glass, and 0.4 dB/cm for Nd:Gd3Ga5O12 bonded to Y3Al5O12 devices.