High Brightness, End-Pumped, Conduction Cooled Nd:YAG Zig-Zag Slab Laser Architecture

Abstract

A novel end-pumped, zig-zag, conduction cooled Nd:YAG slab architecture was implemented in both a master oscillator-power amplifier (MOPA) and power oscillator (PO) configuration. The MOPA laser utilized a passively mode-locked Nd:YAG laser as the source. The amplifier produced 150 W of linearly polarized power with an average M2 of 1.25. The output (at 130 W) was frequency doubled in noncritically phase matched LBO to generate 66 W of green power with an average M2 of 1.8. The PO utilized a stable/unstable resonator and a hyper-Gaussian reflectivity mirror to efficiently extract from the rectangular slab aperture. A continuous wave polarized output power of 380 W was extracted with 47% slope efficiency, an optical to optical efficiency of 34%, and an average M2 of 1.8.