Numerical simulation of 30-kW class liquid-cooled Nd:YAG multi-slab resonator

A numerical modeling is developed for 30-kW class liquid-convection-cooled elastically-mounted Nd:YAG multi-slab laser resonator configuration. The modeling exhibits the thermal effects and resultant wavefront aberration of the gain module under flow cooling and CW pumping at 100-kW level, the self-reproducing oscillating mode within the large-aperture cavity, as well as the beam quality enhancement by adaptive optics. The simulation results predict a CW output power of 31 kW with the optical-optical efficiency of 26.1% obtained from a modified resonator configuration with dual gain modules that have opposite flow directions, while the beam quality can be improved to β<2 after the correction of a deformable mirror.