New compact pump geometry for thin disk lasers with a tilted optical long-pass filter

Abstract

Due to the low absorption of pump light in a thin disk laser, the pump light has to be redirected multiple times onto the active medium in order to achieve high pumping efficiency. Therefore, the pump optics in current systems require a large volume compared to the thin disk itself and multiple optics have to be aligned correctly with each other. Our wedged optical lasing chamber for ytterbium disks (WOLCYD) consists of an optical long-pass filter placed at a small angle directly in front of the thin disk. By this, an in-place multiplication of the number of pump passes is achieved. This results in a compact pump optic without the need of sophisticated alignment efforts. We demonstrate a laser oscillator setup and a laser amplifier setup on the basis of the WOLCYD geometry.