Power scaling of highly neodymium-doped YAG ceramic lasers with a bounce amplifier geometry

High power operation of highly-doped ceramic Nd:YAG laser is demonstrated using a laser diode transversely-pumped bounce geometry. Using a 2% doped ceramic Nd:YAG amplifier, an output power of 45W was achieved with 158W diode pumping. The cavity configuration was optimized for TEM00 operation and a high spatial quality output (M2 >1.5) was obtained at an output power of 27W. A ceramic Nd:YAG laser with 4% doping was operated at over 1 watt of output power. These are the highest power levels achieved in ceramic Nd:YAG lasers at >1% doping level.