Since the demonstration of laser for the first time, the development of laser technology, especially solid-state laser technology, has been progressing continuously, which has led to many new applications and capabilities. Solid-state lasers, including fiber lasers, crystal lasers, and ceramic lasers, have the unique advantages of high efficiency, reliability, flexibility, and small form factor. With the introduction of new materials, components, advanced laser technology and system design, solid-state laser technology has been developed, and it has promoted huge new applications, including the high order nonlinear physics interactions, free space and quantum communications, LIDAR for autonomous vehicles, beam projecting and steering, and materials processing.

The efficient and compact solid-state lasers with high average and peak power is the key technology in various applications. They have already demonstrated extraordinary figures in the near/mid-IR, visible, and UV spectral bands. However, the nonlinear effects, mode degradation, and laser-induced damage have limited the power scaling of various solid-state lasers, which restrict the overall performance of the systems that combines transmission optics with free-space laser beam propagation. Novel laser materials, components, combining and projecting optical designs have been proposed and demonstrated to explore approaches circumventing the aforementioned limitations. This Research Topic aims to provide a comprehensive view of the latest advances in solid-state laser development along with recent new applications, including the demonstration of novel solid-state laser systems with extraordinary properties, special laser materials in the solid-state laser systems, special components that enable novel configurations of the solid-state laser systems, special transmitting and adaptive optics with the high efficiency, special beam combining technology, and the study of phenomena which limit the properties of solid state laser systems.

In this Research Topic, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:
• Power scaling and limitation of high-power solid-state lasers, including various fiber lasers, crystal lasers, ceramic lasers, and so forth, and high-power physical effects, such as stimulated Raman scattering, stimulated Brillouin scattering, mode instability, and so on;
• Beam combining of high-power solid-state lasers, including coherent beam combination, incoherent beam combination, spectral beam combination, and so forth;
• Limiting effects in mid-IR optical parametric oscillator (OPO) technology with high power and good beam quality;
• Design and fabrication of novel laser materials for high-power solid-state lasers, and novel nonlinear optical materials for high-efficiency OPO and second harmonic generation;
• Design and fabrication of the special laser components for solid-state laser power boosting with near-diffraction-limited beam quality;
• Projecting of novel solid-state laser beams with adaptive optics and their propagating in free space;
• Applications of high-power solid-state laser sources.

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