The Innoslab amplifier comprises a diode-laser partially end-pumped thin slab crystal and a folded single-pass optical amplification path. While this configuration differs in many respects from other slab amplifiers, it shares characteristics with partially end-pumped rod amplifiers. It combines outstanding thermal management, efficiency, and beam quality in the 100 W to 1 kW power range. In this paper, we review amplifiers for a wide range of operation regimes and laser materials.
We present a laser plasma based x-ray microscope for the water window employing a high-average power laser system for plasma generation. At 90 W laser power a brightness of 7.4 x 10(11) photons/(s x sr x μm(2)) was measured for the nitrogen Lyα line emission at 2.478 nm. Using a multilayer condenser mirror with 0.3 % reflectivity 10(6) photons/(μm(2) x s) were obtained in the object plane. Microscopy performed at a laser power of 60 W resolves 40 nm lines with an exposure time of 60 s. The exposure time can be further reduced to 20 s by the use of new multilayer condenser optics and operating the laser at its full power of 130 W.
We report obtaining 200 W of continuous wave laser emission at 1.9 µm from an INNOSLAB Tm:YLF (YLiF 4 ) laser. The slope efficiency is 52.2% with respect to the absorbed pump power. The wavelength of the laser output and the polarization direction can be switched between 1890 and 1908 nm. Due to the stable resonator design in both axes of the slab crystal, the output is strongly elliptical with a Gaussian distribution beam shape along the semi-minor axis and a top-hat-like distribution beam shape along the semi-major axis. This laser source is ideal for pumping a holmium-doped slab crystal in a pulsed INNOSLAB amplifier.
In the field of atmospheric research lidar is a powerful technology to measure remotely different parameters like gas or aerosol concentrations, wind speed or temperature profiles. For global coverage, spaceborne systems are advantageous. To achieve highly accurate measurements over long distances high pulse energies are required. A Nd:YAG-MOPA system consisting of a stable oscillator and two subsequent InnoSlab-based amplifier stages was designed and built as a breadboard demonstrator. Overall, more than 500 mJ of pulse energy at 100 Hz pulse repetition frequency at about 30 ns pulse duration in single longitudinal mode were demonstrated. When seeded with 75 mJ pulses, the 2nd amplifier stage achieved an optical efficiency (pump energy to extracted energy) of more than 23 % at excellent beam quality. Recently, different MOPA systems comprising a single InnoSlab amplifier stage in the 100 mJ regime were designed and built for current and future airborne and spaceborne lidar missions. Amplification factors of about 10 at optical efficiencies of about 23 % were achieved. In order to address the 500 mJ regime the established InnoSlab design was scaled geometrically in a straight forward way. Hereby, the basic design properties like stored energy densities, fluences and thermal load densities were retained. The InnoSlab concept has demonstrated the potential to fulfill the strong requirements of spaceborne instruments concerning high efficiency at low optical loads, excellent beam quality at low system complexity. Therefore, it was chosen as baseline concept for the MERLIN mission, currently in phase B
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