Title: crystal laser
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - crystal laser
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.C01430
Status: current

Definition
A solid state laser in which the active medium is composed of ionic species supported in a crystalline host. The first laser used a ruby crystal in which chromium ions as the active medium were supported in an aluminium oxide (sapphire) crystal. One of the most common crystal lasers involves neodymium atoms in a yttrium aluminium garnet host crystal (the YAG:Nd laser).

Related Terms
- YAG: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/Y06721
- active medium: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/A00106
- laser: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/L03459
- solid state laser: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/S05736

Source
- PAC, 1995, 67, 1913. 'Nomenclature, symbols, units, and their usage in spectrochemical analysis-XV. Laser-based molecular spectroscopy for chemical analysis - laser fundamentals (IUPAC Recommendations 1995)' on page 1920 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199567111913)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C01430/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C01430/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C01430/xml

Citation: Citation: 'crystal laser' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.C01430
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Accessed: 2026-05-10T15:12:12+00:00