Diamond cooling of high power diode pumped solid state lasers

Abstract

We have demonstrated the feasibility of cooling high power solid-stae lasers with diamond windows, whose thermal conductivity is about two orders of magnitude higher than sapphire's. An output power of 200Watt was achieved froma single Nd:YVO4 slab in a zigzag configuration when pumped with 600Watt diodes at 808nm. The maximum output power reported in the literature with conventional cooling schemes is about 50W. A 2.3x4x24mm3 slab was pumped from its broad side (4x24 mm2) through a 0.3mm thick optical diamond window placed in close contact with the lasing crystal. The diamond window, held in a water-cooled copper housing acted as a heat conductor. The other broad side of the crystal was cooled directly by its water-cooled copper housing. Since pumping and cooling were along the same axis, a Cartesian thermal gradient was achieved, while the zigzag scheme was used to minimize thermal lensing. By using a BBO Q-switch, 70Watt average power was obtained at 20kHz with a pulse width of 19msec and with a beam quality of 3 and 12 times diffraction limit in the zigzag and transverse directions respectively. The output of a two-head configuration was 295Watt.