Latest advances in high brightness disk lasers

Abstract

In the last decade diode pumped solid state lasers have become an important tool for many industrial materials processing applications. They combine ease of operation with efficiency, robustness and low cost. This paper will give insight in latest progress in disk laser technology ranging from kW-class CW-Lasers over frequency converted lasers to ultra-short pulsed lasers. The disk laser enables high beam quality at high average power and at high peak power at the same time. The power from a single disk was scaled from 1 kW around the year 2000 up to more than 10 kW nowadays. Recently was demonstrated more than 4 kW of average power from a single disk close to fundamental mode beam quality (M²=1.38). Coupling of multiple disks in a common resonator results in even higher power. As an example we show 20 kW extracted from two disks of a common resonator. The disk also reduces optical nonlinearities making it ideally suited for short and ultrashort pulsed lasers. In a joint project between TRUMPF and IFSW Stuttgart more than 1.3 kW of average power at ps pulse duration and exceptionally good beam quality was recently demonstrated. The extremely low saturated gain makes the disk laser ideal for internal frequency conversion. We show >1 kW average power and >6 kW peak power in multi ms pulsed regime from an internally frequency doubled disk laser emitting at 515 nm (green). Also external frequency conversion can be done efficiently with ns pulses. >500 W of average UV power was demonstrated.