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% and the slope efficiency to 55%. Introducing an intracavity Brewster plate to polarize the laser beam, an optical efficiency of 35% and a slope efficiency of 41% 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.