SLAB LASER AND AMPLIFIER

摘要

A laser for high power applications. The laser is a lamp driven slab design with a face to face beam propagation scheme and an end reflection that redirects the amplified radiation back out the same input surface. Also presented is a side to side larger amplifier configuration, permitting very high average and peak powers due to the electrical efficiency of absorbing energy into the crystal, optical extraction efficiency, and scalability of device architecture. Cavity filters adjacent to pump lamps convert the unusable UV portion of the pump lamp spectrum into light in the absorption band of the slab laser thereby increasing the overall pump efficiency. The angle of the end reflecting surface is changed to cause the exit beam to be at a different angle than the inlet beam, thereby eliminating the costly need to separate the beams external to the laser with the subsequent loss of power.

主权项

1. A laser device comprising:
a pump light source arranged to emit light energy in both a first frequency band and a second frequency band; a slab crystal formed into a polygon having at least two parallel sides such that at least one of said parallel sides is flat; and a cavity filter component having a flat side provided adjacent to the at least one flat side of the slab crystal, said cavity filter component being arranged to receive light energy emitted from the pump light source such that the cavity filter component converts light energy received from the pump light source at the first frequency band into light energy substantially within the second frequency band, and wherein said cavity filter component is transparent to light energy emitted from the pump light source at the second frequency band for transmission through the filter component to the at least one flat side of the slab crystal, wherein the slab crystal is configured to absorb the light energy at the second frequency band received from and through the cavity filter component for emitting a laser beam from the slab crystal.