Conductively-cooled, high-energy, single-frequency diode pumped slab laser for space applications

Abstract

A laser-diode-pumped high efficiency, high pulse energy and single-frequency oscillator and amplifier for potential space environment applications have been developed and demonstrated using conductively-cooled heat removal. A diode-pumped injection seeded single-frequency oscillator was achieved by using the resonance-detection technique in Q-Switching operation, and Nd: YAG zigzag slabs based on "pump on bounce" are used in power amplifier stage for high-efficiency pulse energy extraction. Output pulse energy of 800 mJ with 11 ns pulse duration is obtained at a repetition rate of 100 Hz, with a near 3× diffraction-limit beam and an optical-to-optical efficiency of 18%. The experimental result shows that the laser has compact structure, high efficiency, reliability, conductive cooling and can be used for space environments. © The Author(s) 2010..