title: Highly efficient room-temperature Yb:YAG ceramic laser and regenerative amplifier.
abstract: A room-temperature, diode-pumped, pulsed Yb:YAG ceramic free-running laser with a 78% slope efficiency has been demonstrated. It has been shown that fine tuning of the mode diameter to the diameter of the pumped volume with a ratio of the pump to the mode diameter of 0.6 is important for achieving maximum laser efficiency with a Gaussian-like beam profile. A regenerative Yb:YAG ceramic amplifier with a maximum output energy of 14.5 mJ and a super-Gaussian beam profile is demonstrated.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14623, USA. aoki@lle.rochester.edu
authors.forename: A V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Okishev