Abstract

High-power cw diode bars are becoming increasingly attractive as a pump source for high power solid-state lasers, due to their relative cheapness and wide commercial availability. Unfortunately, the highly elliptical output beam (~1 μm × 10 mm) has rendered these devices difficult to use efficiently in end-pumped configurations, and as a consequence their true potential has yet to be fully realized. To date, many of the end-pumping schemes which have been employed with diode bars have either produced a rather large focused pump beam diameter (typically ~1 mm),1-2 or have employed relatively complex resonator designs (e.g. the tightly-folded resonator3).

© 1994 Optical Society of America