Abstract

The characteristics of a solid-state laser architecture that promises to provide appropriate characteristics for high-average-power (MW scale) solid-state was first outlined in the early 1980's by J. Emmett, B. Krupke and J. Trenholme.¹ The gas-cooled-slab (GCS) cooling technology is unique, as compared to more conventional transverse water cooled rod or zigzag slab designs, in that the cooling and optical extraction will simultaneously occur across the two large faces of the slab. Orth and co-workers assembled these advances to describe the performance of a MJ scale GCS diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) within the laser-driven fusion-energy context.² Experimental work on the basic physics of gas-cooling and developing efficient gain media suited for this purpose has been pursued for the past decade.^3,4 The recent emergence of high-power diode arrays provided the final ingredient needed to build an operational efficient GCS DPSSL. We report here the first results for a gas coded-slab laser with outputs of up to 2 J.

© 1996 Optical Society of America