Prospects of pumping power Improvements in solid-state lasers

When the laser medium is pumped by a high pump power beam, the thermal effects are unavoidable. At this point, the gradient temperature generated inside the laser medium is essential for the simulation of the heat-induced laser medium damage. Based on experimental operating conditions listed in works of literature, a theoretical model was derived to reduce damages in solid-state lasers rod with double end-pumping geometry. Analytical thermal stress expression is obtained for the Super-Gaussian pumping profile with various exponent factors (n) and various pumping ratios (rP). The obtained results show that the generated thermal stresses within the laser medium can be significantly reduced with the increase of both (n) and (rP), due to more uniform distributions, and hence the prospect for pumping power scaling can be improved. Also the proposed analysis was examined and the total maximum pump power of 120 W under lasing and 90 W under the non-lasing operations, were obtained respectively at an exponent factor of (n=32) with a pump ratio of 1/2.