Diode Pumped thin ceramic slab Nd:YAG Laser, with 230 W average power and 43% conversion efficiency

In the last ten years we have been working on the design, construction and testing of several diode pumped solid state lasers with various formats, all based on a thin slab ceramic active medium. We adopted different cooling and pumping schemes. A novel configuration with passive cooling, edge-pumping and edge zig-zagged internal propagation has recently shown a high conversion efficiency (43% optical conversion and 60% slope) at a 230 W CW extraction level.