Industry-laser based short pulse diode pumped solid state power amplifier with kW average power

A diode pumped Nd:YAG master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration designed for average power in the kW-regime at high repetition rates has been investigated. The configuration is optimized for high average and high pulse power and good beam quality. In first experiments, with repetition rates up to 2 kHz, average output powers of up to 132 W and 76 mJ per pulse have been achieved with a beam quality of M(exp 2) < 1.5. Modeling predicts up to 2 kW average output power at 10 kHz.