The Raman relaxation rates for
Ni2+ and
Cr3+ ions in MgO crystals have been calculated using a shell model of phonons which is in good agreement with the results of neutron scattering experiments. These shell-model results are compared with those obtained with the Debye model for the phonons and, also, with the available experimental results for
Ni2+ and
Cr3+ in MgO. In the case
Ni2+, 50\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K is the highest temperature for which the relaxation time is sufficiently long to be directly measureable. As might be expected, in this low-temperature region the results based on the shell model and the Debye model of phonons are not significantly different. However, the values of relaxation rates at 123 and 136\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K obtainable from the recent line-shape measurements for
Ni2+ in MgO are in good agreement with those calculated on the basis of the shell model of phonons. In the case of
Cr3+ ions, the relaxation time can be measured directly up to temperatures as high as 200\ifmmode^\circ\else\textdegree\fi{}K, and in this range of temperature the two sets of results differ considerably. With the shell model, we obtain good agreement with the experimental results on the functional dependence of the relaxation rate
T11 on temperature. However, the absolute values of
T11 for
Cr3+ obtained with this phonon model are on the average less than the experimental measurements by a factor of 5. The possible sources which might be important in bridging the gap between the theoretical and experimental results are discussed.
An experimental study of saturable absorption and excited-state absorption (ESA) in several inorganic saturable absorbers, Cr/sup 4+/:YAG, Cr/sup 4+/:GGG, and Cr/sup 4+/:YSGG, is presented. We provide the theoretical background of absorption characteristics in saturable absorbers that exhibit ESA, with some new results: approximate analytical solutions are proposed for the optical transmission in the case of a slow absorber, and for various light intensity conditions of spatially or temporally Gaussian beams in fast and slow absorbers. Experimentally, partial bleaching of the first excited state itself could be observed in Cr/sup 4+/:YAG at /spl lambda/=1064 nm, yielding the higher excited-state lifetime as /spl tau/*=(0.55/spl plusmn/0.1) ns. The regular transmission bleaching curve was measured in Cr/sup 4+/:GGG, for the first time in this material, yielding /spl sigma//sub ga/=(58/spl plusmn/5)/spl times/10/sup -1/ cm/sup 2/, and /spl sigma/e/sub s/=(13/spl plusmn/2)/spl times/10/sup -19/ cm/sup 2/ at /spl lambda/=1064 nm, ESA spectra were measured for the three materials between /spl sim/700 and 900 nm. All three exhibit crossing between saturable absorption at longer wavelengths and inverse saturable absorption at shorter wavelengths.