Predicting spectroscopic properties of laser glasses: Theory and practice

<p indent="0mm">Germanate optical glass, due to its wide infrared transmission range, low phonon energy, and excellent mechanical properties, has important applications in military platforms as infrared window materials and gain media for near and mid-infrared fiber lasers. Developing germanate glass compositions with specific physical and spectroscopic properties is one of the important challenges in this field. In this study, approximately 500 high-quality data were first obtained by a phase diagram approach. Based on this, a model was constructed using the random forest algorithm, replacing more than 20 glass compositions with 12 physical and chemical descriptors as features, accurately predicting properties such as full width at half maximum, emission cross-section, radiative lifetime, and radiative transition probability of the glass. This study optimizes and reduces the complexity of the model by reducing the number of descriptors, and enhances the forecasting and extrapolation abilities in extreme regions. This is of great significance for improving the interpretability and generality of the model and discovering novel laser glasses.