High-power scaling (>100 W) of a diode-pumped TEM00 Nd:GdVO4 laser system

We present results of an investigation to scale a diode-pumped A Nd:GdVO₄ laser system to high powers (>100 W) using a bounce amplifier configuration. A Nd:GdVO₄ laser oscillator with a bounce amplifier geometry, pumped by a single 40-W diode bar, gave 24 W of multimode output power (60% optical efficiency), and 20 W of TEM₀₀ output with M²<1.05. Power scaling of the oscillator system with pumping by multiplexing two (nominally) 40-W diode bars gave 50.1 W of multimode output at 83-W diode pumping, 40 W of predominantly TEM₀₀ output from 81-W of diode pumping, and 34 W TEM₀₀ output (M²_x=1.05,M²_y=1.1) with an external slit spatial filter. Higher power scaling is achieved by using a master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) configuration with the double-diode-pumped oscillator and a bounce amplifier pumped by a 3-bar diode stack. A multimode MOPA output of 100 W is achieved by single pass amplification with 145-W amplifier diode pumping and 104-W TEM₀₀ mode using a double bounce amplifier configuration with 180-W amplifier diode pumping.