Thin-disk laser system operating above 10 kW at near fundamental mode beam quality

Abstract

We report on a thin-disk laser system with more than 10 kW of output power and a beam quality of <i>M</i>²=1.76 at an overall optical-to-optical efficiency of 51%. The system consists of two thin-disk laser oscillators and a thin-disk multi-pass amplifier system. To reach high output powers while maintaining good beam quality, the output beams of two identical laser oscillators are polarization-combined. Subsequently, the beam is amplified in a multi-pass system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power achieved for a thin-disk laser system with a beam quality close to fundamental mode.