Laser ceramics with rare-earth-doped anisotropic materials.

The fabrication of laser-grade anisotropic ceramics by a conventional sintering process is not possible owing to optical scattering at randomly oriented grain boundaries. In this Letter, we report the first (to our knowledge) realization of transparent anisotropic ceramics by using a new crystal orientation process based on large magnetic anisotropy induced by 4f electrons. By slip casting in a 1.4 T magnetic field and subsequent heat treatments, we could successfully fabricate laser-grade calcium fluorapatite ceramics with a loss coefficient of 1.5 cm(-1).