Highly efficient, high-brightness diode stacks-side-pumped Nd: YAG rod laser

摘要

We have proposed a highly efficient and high-brightness quasi-cw Nd:YAG rod laser with a novel-side-pumping design using micro-lens free diode-stacks. We demonstrated 320-W output power with 28-percent electrical-to-optical efficiency, which is, to our knowledge, the highest efficiency reported for diode-pumped solid-state lasers. We also achieved the beam quality of M~2 = 4 with the output power of 500 W by introducing a bifocusing compensation resonator. The corresponding electrical-to-optical efficiency was 20 percent.