8.2  kW high beam quality quasi-continuous-wave face-pumped Nd:YAG slab amplifier

• Published in: Applied optics. Optical technology and biomedical optics 2015-06, Vol.54 (16), p.5011
• Main Authors: Chen, Zhong-Zheng, Xu, Yi-Ting, Guo, Ya-Ding, Wang, Bao-Shan, Xu, Jian, Xu, Jia-Lin, Gao, Hong-Wei, Yuan, Lei, Yuan, Hong-Tao, Lin, Yan-Yong, Xiao, Yun-Sheng, Bo, Yong, Peng, Qin-Jun, Lei, Wen-Qiang, Cui, Da-Fu, Xu, Zu-Yan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2155-3165
• DOI: 10.1364/AO.54.005011

An 8 kW level quasi-continuous-wave (QCW) face-pumped 1064 nm slab laser with high beam quality was developed by a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system. A single-mode fiber seed laser was amplified by two-stage single-pass Nd:YAG rod preamplifiers and four face-pumped Nd:YAG slab amplifiers. The slab amplifiers were well designed with uniform pumping and uniform cooling for well-distributed thermal and stress. A dynamically feedbacked optical aberration compensation device was employed to correct low-order optical aberration, and the residue high-order optical aberration was corrected by an adaptive optics system. The QCW MOPA delivered up to an average power of 8.2 kW with a pulse duration of 200 μs at a repetition rate of 400 Hz. The beam quality factor was measured to be β=3.5.