Abstract
Yb:LuAG ceramic is very promising for thin-disk laser and amplifier architectures since it exhibits a higher thermal conductivity at high doping concentrations and a larger emission cross section than Yb:YAG. In this Letter, we present what we believe to be the first demonstration of a thin-disk laser based on Yb:LuAG ceramic. A maximum output power of 101 W with an optical efficiency of 56% and a slope efficiency of 64% was obtained with a multimode laser resonator. Fundamental-mode laser operation with near diffraction limited beam quality () was also achieved. The fundamental-mode laser resonator showed the output power of 49 W, an optical efficiency of 31%, and a slope efficiency of 44%. A linearly polarized output beam was demonstrated in multimode operation using an intracavity Brewster window. The depolarization loss was measured to be as low as 0.15% per round trip.
© 2014 Optical Society of America
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