High-energy, ceramic-disk Yb:LuAG laser amplifier

Abstract

We report the first short-pulse amplification results to several hundred millijoule energies in ceramic Yb:LuAG. We have demonstrated ns-pulse output from a diode-pumped Yb:LuAG amplifier at a maximum energy of 580 mJ and a peak optical-to-optical efficiency of 28% at 550 mJ. In cavity dumped operation of a nanosecond oscillator we obtained 1 mJ at up to 100 Hz repetition rate. A gain bandwidth of 5.4 nm was achieved at room temperature by measuring the small-signal single-pass gain. Furthermore, we compared our results with Yb:YAG within the same amplifier system.

Thin-disk laser pump schemes for large number of passes and moderate pump source quality

“…Moreover, the efficient cooling allows pumping in the kW regime and the usage of quasi three-level-system materials having low quantum defect and high gain. To date, the paradigmatic material of choice, especially in industrial applications, is ytterbium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet (Yb:YAG) [17,18,19] but recently, researchers have concentrated on finding new materials with larger thermal conductivity for higher output power, and with larger bandwidth for ultrashort pulse generation or tunable lasers [9,20,21,22,23,24,25]. 3D schematic of the pump optics: heat sink (gold), parabolic mirror (gray), and prisms acting as mirror-pairs (green and blue).…”

High energy Yb:YAG active mirror laser system for transform limited pulses bridging the picosecond gap

“…Up to 20 passes with a mode size of 1.7 mm (FWHM, shown for the laser beam in Fig. b) are guided through a 4 f‐configuration similar to MPA I, while the focus is between M3 and M4 .…”

Temperature dependent emission and absorption cross section of Yb^3+ doped yttrium lanthanum oxide (YLO) ceramic and its application in diode pumped amplifier

“…The main emission lines near 1031 nm show broad bandwidth emission and an increase of the emission cross-section by a factor of 2.2 as the temperature is reduced from room temperature (300K) to 80 K. Note that the emission line near 1072 nm also shows broad bandwidth emission even at cryogenic temperatures, however, with only 33% of the crosssection of the 1031 nm peak. We found that in the temperature range 80 K ≤ T ≤ 300 K the temperature dependent emission cross-section for 5% doped Yb:YLO at 1031 nm can be approximated by a polynomial fit expressed as the following function, where T is in K and σ e is in cm 2 , ( ) 21 22 24 Fig. 4 cross sections for Yb:YLO measured at 80K are compared to cross sections for Yb:YAG at room temperature.…”

“…A dichroic mirror M1 coated for AR at 940 nm and highreflection (HR) at 1030 nm was used to separate the pump from the seed beam. An image relaying multi-pass architecture [21] was utilized to propagate the seed beam 12 times through the gain medium. Figure 7(b) shows the near field profile of the seed beam.…”