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Solid-state lasers in which the gain medium is an active optical fibre - usually doped with rare earth elements (e.g. erbium, neodymium, ytterbium, thulium, etc.) - are named fibre lasers. With respect to other type of lasers, such lasers have the advantage to be able to output higher power, to have higher temperature and vibrational stability, and to present longer lifetimes; they also have the benefit of being more compact than other lasers (e.g. gas lasers) of comparable power. Such characteristics, coupled with their reduced cost, make them paramount in industrial and biomedical applications as well as for communications, and have driven the attention of the scientific community.
This Collection gathers original research in the topic of fibre lasers, spanning from the manufacturing and characterisation of a fibre laser system to its exploitation in exciting applications in engineering, biomedical, and natural science.