Femtosecond pulses at 50-W average power from an Yb:YAG planar waveguide amplifier seeded by an Yb:KYW oscillator.

We report the demonstration of a high-power single-side-pumped Yb:YAG planar waveguide amplifier seeded by an Yb:KYW femtosecond laser. Five passes through the amplifier yielded 700-fs pulses with average powers of 50 W at 1030 nm. A numerical simulation of the amplifier implied values for the laser transition saturation intensity, the small-signal intensity gain coefficient and the gain bandwidth of 10.

Generation of microstripe cylindrical and toroidal mirrors by localized laser evaporation of fused silica.

We report a new technique for the rapid fabrication of microstripe cylindrical and toroidal mirrors with a high ratio (>10) of the two principal radii of curvature (RoC(1)/RoC(2)), and demonstrate their effectiveness as mode-selecting resonator mirrors for high-power planar waveguide lasers. In this process, the larger radius of curvature (RoC(1)) is determined by the planar or cylindrical shape of the fused silica substrate selected for laser processing, whilst the other (RoC(2)) is produced by controlled CO(2) laser-induced vaporization of the glass. The narrow stripe mirror aperture is achieved by applying a set of partially overlapped laser scans, with the incident laser power, the number of laser scans, and their spacing being used to control the curvature produced by laser evaporation.