High Power Lasers in ROD, SLAB, and TUBE Geometry

Abstract

This talk focuses on research and development of high power solid state lasers for industrial materials processing. For these lasers one is generally aiming at compact laser heads with high output power, good beam quality, and high electrical-to-optical efficiency. However, these qualitative goals depend on the specific application and can be quite different. For example, very often the beam quality is “good enough”, if the beam can be coupled to a 600-μm quartz fiber with a numerical aperture of 0.2. This is an important benchmark for the beam quality because many industrial laser systems use such fibers of 600 μm or 1000 μm core diameter.