In this paper the overview of the recent study on the rare-earth activated waveguides performed in the Optoelectronic Department of IMiO is presented. We reported on the development of rare earth-doped fluorozirconate (ZBLAN) glass fibers that allow a construction of a new family of visible and ultraviolet fiber lasers pumped by upconversion. Especially the performance of holmium devices is presented. The properties of laser planar waveguides obtained by the LPE process and the growth conditions of rare earths doped YAG layers are presented. In this paper we present also the theoretical study of the nonlinear operation of planar waveguide laser, as an example the microdisk Nd:YAG structure is discussed. We derived an approximate formula which relates the small signal gain in the Nd:YAG active medium and the laser characteristics, obtained for whispering-gallery modes and radial modes, to the output power and real parameters of the laser structure

The above-threshold operation of a Fabry-Perot laser with a nonlinear PT (parity time) mirror is investigated. For the first time, the analysis accounts for gain saturation of an active medium as well as gain and loss saturation effects in the PT mirror. The obtained laser output intensity characteristics have been demonstrated as a function of various PT mirror parameters such as: the ratio of the PT structure period to laser operating wavelength, number of PT mirror primitive cells, and gain and loss saturation intensities of the PT mirror gain and loss layers. Two functional configurations of the laser have been considered: laser operating as a discrete device, and as a component of an integrated circuit. It has been shown that, in general, the laser operation depends on the PT mirror orientation with respect to the active medium of the laser. Moreover, when the laser radiation is outcoupled through the PT mirror to the free space, bistable operation is possible, when losses of the mirror’s loss layer saturate faster than gain of the gain layer. Furthermore, for a given saturation intensity of the mirror loss layers, the increase of the saturation intensity of the mirror gain layers causes increasing output intensity, i.e., the PT mirror additionally amplifies the laser output signal.