An international team consisting of scientists from HiLASE Centre, ELI-Beamlines, Crytur and STFC have tested monocrystals grown by a new method. This method allows growing large crystals diameters for high energy high average power laser amplifiers.
The experimental results obtained for Yb:YAG with absorbing cladding show that the monocrystals perform exactly the same as ceramics that was up to now the only source for amplifiers with more than 100 J of output energy and more than 1 kW of average power.
In comparison to ceramics, the monocrystals may allow a better control of the depolarization in the amplifier and thus can increase the efficiency of the laser amplifier. We will explore this behavior in the following projects.
You can read more in Progress page of Optics Express.
