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Definition

An optically-pumped disk laser

A disk laser is a type of solid-state laser characterized by a heat drain and laser output that are realized on opposite sides of a thin layer of active medium.^[1] A solid-state laser is a laser that uses a gain medium that is a solid, rather than a liquid such as dye lasers or a gas such as gas lasers. ...

The disk laser should not be confused with laser disk which is a disk-shaped storage of information with optical recording-reading. The disk laser does not have to be circular; it can be rectangular as well.

History

Earliest mention of a thin-disk laser appeared in the Proceedings of SPIE in 1993 ^[2]. Then, it was developed in various research groups. the heat sink does not have to be transparent, and such a configuration was believed to allow the power scaling ^[3].

Limit of power scaling for disk lasers

The power of such lasers is limited by the overheating, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and the background round-trip loss.^[4] To avoid overheating, the size should be increased at the power scaling. Then, to avoid strong losses due to ASE, the transverse-trip gain cannot be much larger than unity. This requires to reduce the gain ; this gain is determined by the reflectivity of the output coupler and thickness . The round-trip gain should remain larger than the round-trip backgronud loss ; this requires to increase also the thickness . Then, at some critical size, the disk becomes too thick and cannot be pumped above the threshold without overheating. The maximal power achievable for disk lases is inversely proportional to the cube of the background loss . Amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) is light, produced by spontaneous emission, that has been optically amplified by the process of stimulated emission in an gain medium. ...

References

1. ^ Thin disk lasers. Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology.
2. ^ K. Ueda, N.Uehara. Laser-diode-pumped solid state lasers for gravitational wave antenna, Proceedings of SPIE, vol.1837, 336-345 (1993)..
3. ^ A. Giesen, H. H"ugel, A. Voss, K. Wittig, U. Brauch and H. Opower. Scalable concept for diode-pumped high-power solid-state lasers, Applied Physics B 58 (5), {365-372} (1994)
4. ^ D. Kouznetsov; J.F. Bisson, J. Dong, and K. Ueda (2006). "Surface loss limit of the power scaling of a thin-disk laser". JOSAB 23 (6): 1074–1082. Retrieved on 2007-01-26. ; [1]