Joule-class sub-nanosecond pulses produced by end-pumped direct bonded YAG/sapphire modular amplifier.

A Joule-class room-temperature diode-pumped solid-state laser was developed. The energy scaling of the 100 mJ 1064 nm seed pulse was realized by a series of two diode-pumped amplifiers. The gain medium consists in free combinations of Nd:YAG ceramics bonded to sapphire transparent heat sinks, to relax the thermal load induced by the 34 kW pump power.

High peak-power near-MW laser pulses by third harmonic generation at 355 nm in Ca(BO)F nonlinear single crystals.

In this work, the performance of Ca(BO)F (CBF) single crystals was investigated for the third harmonic generation at 355 nm. A high energy conversion efficiency of 16.9% at 355 nm was reached using a two-conversion-stage setup.

100 Hz operation in 10 PW/sr·cm class Nd:YAG Micro-MOPA.

An Nd:YAG Micro-MOPA, based on a microchip master oscillator and power amplifier system with gain aperture beam cleaning, could generate sub-ns 200 mJ pulses with extremely high brightness of 18 PW/sr·cm [Opt. Express268609 (2018)]. However, the system repetition rate was limited to 10 Hz, due to thermal problems occurring in the main amplifier rod under high-power operation.

High brightness energetic pulses delivered by compact microchip-MOPA system.

High brightness compact microchip-seeded MOPA system was realized. Implementing a microchip preamplifier stage acting as gain aperture element lead to excellent output beam quality with M = 1.4.