Nd:YAG slab laser end-pumped by laser-diode stacks and its beam shaping

An efficient high power cw Nd:YAG slab laser, partially end-pumped by diode laser stacks, and a novel beam shaping technique are reported in this paper. The optical efficiency amounted to 44 per cent and the slope efficiency to 55 per cent. Introducing an intracavity Brewster plate to polarize the laser beam, an optical efficiency of 35 per cent and a slope efficiency of 41 per cent was obtained. The output beam was rectangular and the beam quality asymmetric in two orthogonal directions. To equalize the beam quality, a step mirror beam shaping technique was introduced. The beam shaping technique and the results obtained with it are discussed in this paper.