A 3–5 μm mid-infrared band is a good window for atmospheric transmission. It has the advantages of high contrast and strong penetration under high humidity conditions. Therefore, it has important applications in the fields of laser medicine, laser radar, environmental monitoring, remote sensing, molecular spectroscopy, industrial processing, space communication and photoelectric confrontation. In this paper, the application background of mid-infrared laser is summarized. The ways to realize mid-infrared laser output are described by optical parametric oscillation, mid-infrared solid-state laser doped with different active ions and fiber laser doped with different rare earth ions. The advantages and disadvantages of various mid-infrared lasers are briefly described. The technical approaches, schemes and research status of mid-infrared lasers are introduced.

We used the ${\mathrm{Cr}}^{2+}\text{:}\mathrm{ZnS}$ as a saturable absorber to obtain a passively $Q$-switched Ho:YAG ceramic laser operating near 2.1 μm. The maximum average output power of 14.8 W and a shortest pulse width of 29 ns were obtained, and to our knowledge, this is the best report for the PQS Ho:YAG ceramic laser. A maximum energy per pulse of 0.6 mJ with a maximum pulse repetition frequency of 24.4 kHz was achieved, which corresponded to a peak power of 20 kW. We first used the PQS laser as the pump source of optical parametric oscillator to obtain the mid-infrared laser. A maximum average output power of 4.4 W was achieved from the ${\mathrm{ZnGeP}}_2$ parametric oscillator, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 49.5% with respect to the incident pump power.

It is reported in this paper that a cavity-dumped electro-optically $Q$-switched Tm:LuAG oscillator offers a unique combination of high power, constant short pulse duration, and high repetition rate at a wavelength of 2012.7 nm. The constant short pulse durations of 3 ns were achieved by the cavity-dumped technology at different repetition rates from 60 to 100 kHz. An average power of 1.22 W and a peak power of 4.1 kW were obtained at a repetition rate of 100 kHz and an incident pump power of 42.3 W, corresponding to the slope efficiency of 6% and beam quality factor of $M^2\sim 1.4$. In addition, the accumulation time of intracavity photons from 500 to 1000 ns was studied for the performance of the output characteristic.

We demonstrated an efficient and tunable single-longitudinal-mode Ho:YLF ring laser based on Faraday effect for application to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). Single-longitudinal-mode power at 2051.65 nm achieved 528 mW with the slope efficiency of 39.5% and the M² factor of 1.07, and the tunable range of about 178 GHz was obtained by inserting a Fabry-Perot (F-P) etalon with the thickness of 0.5 mm. In addition, the maximum single-longitudinal-mode power reached 1.5 W with the injected power of 528 mW at 2051.65 nm by master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) technique. High efficiency and tunable single-longitudinal-mode based on Faraday effect around 2 μm has not been reported yet to the best of our knowledge.