Side-pumped Nd:YVO4 cw laser with grazing-incidence small angle configuration

Within the existing variety of laser cavity geometries and gain materials there is one combination that is particularly interesting because of its reduced complexity and high efficiency: the edge-pumped slab-laser using grazing-incidence geometry and a gain media with a very high pump absorption cross-section. In this work we studied a diode side-pumped Nd:YVO4 cw laser. We describe a single and a multiple bounce laser configurations. We demonstrate 22 W of multimode output power for 35 watts of pump power with a single pass through the gain media. A high optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 63% and a slope efficiency of 74% with a very compact and simple Nd:YVO4 cavity that uses joint stability zones was achieved. The beam quality was M2 = 26 x 11 in the horizontal and vertical direction, respectively. With a double pass configuration we achieved 17 watts with a better beam quality of M2 = 3,4 x 3,7, in the horizontal and vertical direction, respectively. (author)