High-energy, ceramic-disk Yb:LuAG laser amplifier

• DOI: 10.1364/oe.20.021992
• Publication Date: 2012-09-12T01:53:09Z
• Authors: M. Siebold; M. Loeser; F. Roeser; M. Seltmann; G. Harzendorf; I. Tsybin; S. Linke; S. Banerjee; P. D. Mason; P. J. Phillips; K. Ertel; J. C. Collier; U. Schramm
• Keywords: Equipment Failure Analysis; Ceramics; Amplifiers, Electronic; Energy Transfer; 0103 physical sciences; Equipment Design; Lasers, Solid-State; 01 natural sciences; 7. Clean energy

We report the first short-pulse amplification results to several hundred millijoule energies in ceramic Yb:LuAG. We have demonstrated ns-pulse output from a diode-pumped Yb:LuAG amplifier at a maximum energy of 580 mJ and a peak optical-to-optical efficiency of 28% at 550 mJ. In cavity dumped operation of a nanosecond oscillator we obtained 1 mJ at up to 100 Hz repetition rate. A gain bandwidth of 5.4 nm was achieved at room temperature by measuring the small-signal single-pass gain. Furthermore, we compared our results with Yb:YAG within the same amplifier system.