Optimum Design of End-Pumped Solid-State Lasers

The principle of laser action was first experimentally demonstrated in 1960 by T. Maiman (Maiman, 1960). This first system was a solid-state laser in which a ruby crystal and a flashlamp served as gain medium and pump source, respectively. Soon after this first laser experiment, it was realized that solid-state lasers are highly attractive sources for various scientific and industrial applications such as laser marking, material processing, holography, spectroscopy, remote sensing, lidar, optical nonlinear frequency conversion, THz frequency generation (Koechner, 2006; Hering et al., 2003; Ferguson & Zhang, 2003; Sennaroghlu, 2007). Since the early 1980’s with the development of reliable high power laser diode and the replacement of traditional flashlamp pumping by laser-diode pumping, the diodepumped solid-state lasers, DPSSL's, have received much attention and shown the significant improvements of laser performance such as optical efficiency, output power, frequency stability, operational lifetime, linewidth, and spatial beam quality.