Abstract
We demonstrate the optical architecture of a fairly compact design at 1030 nm for linear amplification, which enables the combination of very high gains and output energies in a single stage to be operated at room temperature. Gains and energies are experienced in the nanosecond regime up to 20 dB and 120 mJ, respectively, at the same time. This design makes use of a thick slab of ${\rm{Y}}{{\rm{b}}^{3 +}}{:}{\rm{YAG}}$ in a scalable cat’s-eye cavity, provided there is uniform edge-pumping and fine control of a number of relevant spatial characteristics regarding the pump and the cavity. Highly variable operating conditions are considered for a comprehensive benchmark of the optical performance. They involve single 3 ns long seed pulses with an energy of 1 mJ, accordingly to more or less gain saturation, together with long bursts of stretched picosecond-long pulses. This gives access to kilowatt-class pulse trains of duration 3–5 ms, with a total energy of up to 3 J and an optical efficiency of 20%–25%, prior to more complete gain saturation.
© 2020 Optical Society of America
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