Abstract

A high average power solid-state laser operating at high efficiency is desired, especially for application to material processing. As is well known, it is very difficult to produce a large Nd:YAG crystal with high optical homogeneity. On the contrary, laser glasses of large size with optical homogeneity of ±1 × 10^-6 can be easily obtained. High frequency operation of laser glass is very difficult due to low thermal conductivity of glass. However it is expected that we can obtain high average power using this high-quality Nd:glass by the solution of thermal effect problems due to pumping light.

© 1994 IEEE