Abstract

A high-average-power, highly efficient sold-state laser is desirable, especially for application to material processing and X-ray generation. In these applications, a large laser material to irradiate high energy is required. As is well known, it is very difficult to grow a large Nd:YAG crystal with high optical homogeneity. However, laser glasses of a large size with an optical homogeneity of ± 1 × 10^-6 can be easily obtained, butthe high-frequency operation of glass laser is limited due to the low thermal conductivity of glass, Dane [I) operated the Nd:glass flash lamp-pumped zig-zag amplifier at maximum repetition frequency of3 Hz. On the contrary, the array Nd:glass slab laser [2) could be operated at higher repetition frequency.

© 1996 Optical Society of America