Renovating electrical power-to-TEM00 mode laser power conversion efficiency with four-lamp/four-rod pumping scheme

One of the major drawbacks in lamp-pumped laser development resides in its low electrical input-to-TEM₀₀ mode laser conversion efficiency. Here is proposed a four-lamp/four-rod solid-state laser pumping concept. Four Nd:YAG rods were pumped by four 1.0 kW input power Krypton CW arc lamps within a quadruple ellipse pump cavity, ensuring a good absorbed pump power distribution within each rod. The laser design parameters were optimized in Zemax® and LASCAD® software to maximize the TEM₀₀ mode laser power. 35.80 W TEM₀₀ mode total laser power was numerically calculated, corresponding to 0.90% electrical input-to-TEM₀₀ mode laser conversion efficiency and 2.25 times improvement over that of the state-of-the-art lamp-pumped laser. For the extraction of a single TEM₀₀ mode laser beam, a novel laser cavity was presented. 25.94 W laser beam brightness figure of merit was numerically calculated, corresponding to a 4-fold increase over that from each of the four TEM₀₀ mode laser beams.