title: Demonstration of a Yb3+-doped Lu3Al5O12 ceramic thin-disk laser.
abstract: Yb:LuAG ceramic is very promising for thin-disk laser and amplifier architectures since it exhibits a higher thermal conductivity at high doping concentrations and a larger emission cross section than Yb:YAG. In this Letter, we present what we believe to be the first demonstration of a thin-disk laser based on Yb:LuAG ceramic. A maximum output power of 101 W with an optical efficiency of 56% and a slope efficiency of 64% was obtained with a multimode laser resonator. Fundamental-mode laser operation with near diffraction limited beam quality (M2≈1.22) was also achieved. The fundamental-mode laser resonator showed the output power of 49 W, an optical efficiency of 31%, and a slope efficiency of 44%. A linearly polarized output beam was demonstrated in multimode operation using an intracavity Brewster window. The depolarization loss was measured to be as low as 0.15% per round trip.
authors: Hiroaki
authors: H
authors: Nakao
authors: Akira
authors: A
authors: Shirakawa
authors: Ken-ichi
authors: K
authors: Ueda
authors: Hideki
authors: H
authors: Yagi
authors: Takagimi
authors: T
authors: Yanagitani
authors: Birgit
authors: B
authors: Weichelt
authors: Katrin
authors: K
authors: Wentsch
authors: Marwan Abdou
authors: MA
authors: Ahmed
authors: Thomas
authors: T
authors: Graf