Investigation of thermooptical effects in a high-brightness Yb:KGW laser

The thermo-optical effects in the diode-end-pumped lasers with Yb:KGW anisotropic crystals is experimentally investigated. Strong dependence of optical power and aberrations of the lenses on orientation of laser crystals concerning a direction of laser radiation propagation and a polarization direction is confirmed. By optimizing the crystal configuration we obtained a high-power output laser beams with the high spatial quality M² close to unit in Q-switched mode and at regenerative amplification of chirped pulses.