A Disc-Shaped Composite Ceramic Active Element with Multipass and Multichannel Pumping

Disk lasers are a promising configuration that can produce high output power with high spatial quality of radiation due to efficient heat removal from the active region. An important task in the design of disk lasers is to achieve efficient pumping with high gain uniformity across the active region. A new multipass pumping scheme is proposed. The pumping distribution in a Yb:YAG/YAG disk-shaped composite ceramic active element has been numerically simulated and experimentally investigated. It is shown that for such a scheme with 12-channel pumping, the distribution of absorbed pump power with an inhomogeneity of maximum 12.6% can be achieved at a pumping efficiency of 80%.