Abstract

High power 2pm lasers have several important medical and remote sensing applications and substantial research efforts were dedicated to these laser systems in recent years. Honea et al [1] have demonstrated a 115W CW 2µm Tm:YAG laser with an end-pumped architecture using lens duct. Here, we report a 120W side-pumped Tm:YAG laser using compound parabolic concentrators (CPC) to couple the pump light into the laser rod. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power 2µm solid-state laser achieved to date. The main advantage of side-pumping lies in its ease for power scaling and flexible cavity designing in contrast to the end-pumped configuration.

© 2000 IEEE