Abstract
Although the first-order thermal-induced effect can be eliminated in a slab laser, thermal lensing still exists under high-power pumping. 2 It is important to investigate the thermal stability of slab lasers. With measured thermal-induced focal powers of the 6 × 20 × 94 mm3 YAG slab in the x and y directions as a function of electric input power (Fig. 1), where x is along the slab width and y is along the height, we used a plane-concave thermal stable resonator whose thermal stable range is so large that the diopters of the x and y directions are all in the stable range in spite of their differences. The output beam divergences were invariant with the pump power up to 10 kW. In the x direction the divergence angle was ~6.8 mrad and in the y direction it was ~1.7 mrad. The maximum output power was >150 W (Fig. 2).
© 1992 Optical Society of America
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