Advances in solid state lasers with nonlinear phase conjugate mirrors

Abstract

Summary form only. The availability of high power laser diodes leads to new generation of all solid state lasers including new configurations of diode pumping to increase the laser efficiency and extract much higher energy or average power from the amplifying medium. However, high power pumping brings thermal loading which induces stress birefringence and spatial aberrations. These thermal effects corrupt the laser brightness and therefore induce a degradation of the spatial beam profile.