Editing Samarium (section)

===Lasers===
Samarium-doped [[calcium fluoride]] crystals were used as an active medium in one of the first [[solid-state laser]]s designed and built by [[Peter Sorokin]] (co-inventor of the [[dye laser]]) and Mirek Stevenson at [[IBM]] research labs in early 1961. This samarium laser gave pulses of red light at 708.5&nbsp;nm. It had to be cooled by liquid helium and so did not find practical applications.<ref>Bud, Robert and Gummett, Philip [https://books.google.com/books?id=HMx_6FtHBcUC&pg=PA268 ''Cold War, Hot Science: Applied Research in Britain's Defence Laboratories, 1945–1990''], NMSI Trading Ltd, 2002 {{ISBN|1-900747-47-2}} p. 268</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Sorokin|first1=P. P.|title=Contributions of IBM to Laser Science—1960 to the Present|journal=IBM Journal of Research and Development|volume=23|page=476|date=1979|doi=10.1147/rd.235.0476|issue=5|bibcode=1979IBMJ...23..476S}}</ref> Another samarium-based laser became the first saturated [[X-ray laser]] operating at wavelengths shorter than 10 nanometers. It gave 50-picosecond pulses at 7.3 and 6.8&nbsp;nm suitable for uses in [[holography]], high-resolution [[microscopy]] of biological specimens, [[deflectometry]], [[interferometry]], and [[radiography]] of dense plasmas related to confinement fusion and [[astrophysics]]. Saturated operation meant that the maximum possible power was extracted from the lasing medium, resulting in the high peak energy of 0.3&nbsp;mJ. The active medium was samarium plasma produced by irradiating samarium-coated glass with a pulsed infrared [[Nd:YAG laser|Nd-glass laser]] (wavelength ~1.05&nbsp;μm).<ref>{{cite journal |last=Zhang |first=J. |title=A Saturated X-ray Laser Beam at 7 Nanometers |journal=Science |volume=276 |page=1097 |date=1997 |doi=10.1126/science.276.5315.1097 |issue=5315}}</ref>