Eliminating the parasitic thermal effects in active elements, to avoid beam quality degradation, is a key point in high-power laser design. The authors of this publication in JOSA B showed that carefully following this “gold” rule could result in a new simple design of laser amplifiers using standard rod active elements with end diode pumping. In this design, the pump beam waist was shifted as close as possible to the active element edge, which is in contact to a heatsink. As a result, stable emission of an ultrafast Yb:YAG amplifier with >100W average power, reasonable depolarization, and good beam quality was demonstrated.

In the future, this technique might be useful for laser elements with high energy gap between pump and emission, such as Thulium or Erbium doped laser rods, where thermal management is more critical than that for Ytterbium doped materials.

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