Abstract

Waste heat is generated inside all laser media as a by-product of the lasing process. More power is always required to establish a population inversion than can be extracted by stimulated emission. In high power solid-state lasers, heat loads are usually in excess of 500 W/cm³. This magnitude heat load distorts laser beam quality and restricts the average power of solid-state laser system.

© 2002 Optical Society of America