Toward high brightness, multi-kilowatt solid state lasers
High average power (HAP) solid state laser output with improved beam quality has introduced new capabilities in materials processing. At the 500 W level and with a beam quality of a few'' times the diffraction limit, the General Electric NY slab is able to drill 5 cm of stainless steel in a few seconds. We expect that 2--3 kW of near infrared laser output in a low order spatial mode would enable metal working now unknown to industry. The HAP output of slab lasers is limited by the size of the available laser crystals and the pump power. Core free, six cm diameter NY boules have been grown on an experimental basis. High optical quality NG can be obtained up to 10 cm in diameter. We present the results of our modeling based on these crystals pumped by advanced arc-lamps or laser diode arrays. We project HAP laser outputs of 1.6 kW from an existing Vortek pumped NG oscillator and about 2 kW from diode pumped NY device. Several kW of laser output can be expected from two such slabs in a MOPA configuration before optical damage limits are reached. The three dimensional stress-optic code which we used to optimize our designs, was normalized to available experimental data obtained with the above NG slab at the 500 W level and a 40 W diode pumped NY test bed. Our calculations indicate the essential parameters for attainment of high beam quality. Cooling uniformity across the pumped faces of the slab is critical and the location of the transition between pumped and un-pumped regions towards the slab tips is very important. A flat pumping profile was found to be desirable and predicted one wave of distortion which should be correctable over about 75% of the aperture however, an even better wavefront was predicted over 90% of the aperture when the regions near the edges of the slab were slightly over-pumped relative to the central regions and the regions near to the ends were tapered to compensate for transition effects.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (USA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/DP
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 6253695
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-104394; CONF-9011155--2; ON: DE91008990
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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42 ENGINEERING
426002* -- Engineering-- Lasers & Masers-- (1990-)
DESIGN
FABRICATION
JOINING
LASER BEAM MACHINING
LASER WELDING
LASERS
LUMINOSITY
MACHINING
NEODYMIUM LASERS
OPTICAL PROPERTIES
OPTICAL PUMPING
PERFORMANCE
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
PUMPING
SOLID STATE LASERS
WELDING