Cooling of high power laser systems

摘要

A method and apparatus for cooling a high power laser oscillator or amplifier is disclosed in which a plurality of laser gain media that are configured such that the width of the media is greater than the thickness of the media, are sandwiched between pairs of optically transparent materials having high thermal conductivity. In this way, a shortened thermal path is created from the face surface of the laser gain media axially via the optically transparent heat conductor to an external heat exchange system. This provides an increased level of cooling of the interior of the laser gain media and avoids the deleterious effects caused by over heating of the laser gain media particularly with large effective cross sections desired for high power and/or high pulse repetition and high pulse energy operation.