High power ceramic slab laser

High power solid-state laser has been widely used in energy, advanced manufacturing, information, medical and military defense fields. As a new generation of solid laser materials, the laser ceramic materials are characterized by uniform and controllable doping concentration, good optical uniformity, strong resistance to laser thermal damage, easy to prepare large size and composite structure,which have great potential in high power laser generation. In this paper, the research progress of high power ceramic slab laser in recent years was reported. The Nd:YAG ceramic slab laser was developed. It could be realized that the maximum output power was 4.35 kW and the laser pulse width was 160 μs at a repetition rate of 400 Hz. Moreover, the Yb:YAG ceramic slab laser was developed with the maximum output power of 9.8 kW under the pulse width of 560 μs and repetition frequency of 160 Hz. The optical conversion efficiency was 60% relative to the absorbed pumped power. These studies have explored new technical ways for the further development of high beam quality and high efficiency solid-state laser with higher output power.