Face pumping of thin, solid-state slab lasers with laser diodes

A new technique for face pumping of slab lasers uses transfer of light from 10 quasi-cw laser diode bars through a slotted mirror into a rectangular, highly reflective pump chamber, giving efficient multipass pumping of a thin Nd:glass slab laser. A slope efficiency of 28% and a maximum pulse energy of 65 mJ have been obtained, and gain and loss measurements with thickness t = 0.45-1.04 mm have confirmed the lit scaling of gain in thin slabs and the high efficiency of pump light transfer. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America.