Photothermal radiometry has been widely used to measure the thermal diffusivity of bulk materials. In the case of thin plates and filaments, a one-dimensional heat propagation model including heat losses has been developed, predicting that the thermal diffusivity can be obtained by recording both the surface temperature amplitude and phase profile slopes (“slope method”). However, this method has given highly overestimated values of the thermal diffusivity of poor-conducting films and filaments. In this paper we analyze the effect of the experimental factors affecting the thermal diffusivity measurements of thin plates and filaments using infrared thermography, in order to establish the experimental conditions needed to obtain accurate and reliable values of the diffusivity of any kind of material using the slope method. We present the calculations of the surface temperature of thin isotropic and anisotropic plates heated by a modulated and tightly focused laser beam, showing that the slope method is also valid for this kind of pointlike heating. Special attention is paid to the effect of surface heat losses (convective and radiative) on the diffusivity measurements of small-dimension and poor-conducting materials. Lock-in thermography measurements performed in the best experimental conditions on a wide set of samples of different thermal properties (thin isotropic and anisotropic plates and filaments) confirm the validity of the slope method to measure accurately the thermal diffusivity of samples of these shapes.

The infrared to visible upconversion processes have been investigated for ${\mathrm{Nd}}^{3+}$-doped chalcohalide glasses with different halide modifiers by using steady-state and time-resolved laser spectroscopy. Two different upconversion mechanisms have been identified depending on the infrared excitation wavelength. When the excitation wavelength is resonant with the ${}^4{F}_{3/2}$ state, three main bands at 538, 600, and 675 nm are observed and attributed to emissions from the ${}^4{G}_{7/2}$ level. These upconverted emissions occur via energy-transfer upconversion involving two neodymium ions in the ${}^4{F}_{3/2}$ state. However, nonresonant excitation at higher energies than that of ${}^4{F}_{3/2}$ state (between states ${}^4{F}_{3/2}$ and ${}^4{F}_{5/2})$ or in resonance with the ${}^4{F}_{5/2}$ state, causes an additional blue emission to originate from the ${}^2{P}_{1/2}$ state. This latter upconverted emission can be attributed to excited-state absorption of the pump radiation. The proposed upconversion mechanisms responsible for the different emissions from levels ${}^2{P}_{1/2}$ and ${}^4{G}_{7/2}$ are supported by both the time evolution of the upconversion luminescence after infrared pulsed excitation and the upconversion luminescence excitation spectra.

Anti-Stokes cooling between room temperature and 77 K in a fluorochloride glass (CNBZn) and a fluoride glass (BIG) doped with 1 mol % of ${\mathrm{YbF}}_3$ has been demonstrated by using collinear photothermal deflection and conventional laser excitation spectroscopies under high photon irradiances. The cooling efficiency for CNBZn glass which is ∼2.0% relative to the absorbed laser power at 1010 nm and 300 K falls about 20% at 77 K. The cooling efficiency for BIG glass was only ∼0.6% at room temperature. A model accounting for the photon-ion-phonon interaction is in good agreement with the observed temperature dependence of the cooling process and shows its relation with the vibrational properties of the material.