Calculation and comparison of thermal effect in laser diode pumped slab lasers with different pumping structures

Laser diode (LD) pumped slab laser, as an important high average power solid-state laser, is a promising laser source in military and industrial fields. The different laser diode pumping structures lead to different thermal effect in the slab gain medium. The thermal and stress analysis of slab laser with different pumping structure are performed by finite element analysis (FEA) with the software program ANSYS. The calculation results show that the face pumped and cooled laser results in a near one-dimension temperature distribution and eliminates thermal stress induced depolarization. But the structure is low pump efficiency due to the small thickness of slabs and the requirement to cool and pump through the same faces. End-pumped slab laser is high pump efficiency and excellent mode match, but its pumping arrangement is fairly complicated. The edge-pumped face-cooling slab laser's pump efficiency is better than face-pumping, and its pumping structure is simpler than end-pumped laser, but the tensile stress on surfaces may initiate failure of the gain medium so it is important to design so that the stress is well below the stress fracture limit. The comparison of the thermal effects with different pumping structure shows that, the edge-pumped slab laser has engineering advantages in high power slab laser's application. Furthermore, the end-pumped slab laser tends to get the best beam quality, so it is fit for the application which has a special requirement on laser beam quality.