Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC

Thomas C Galvin

Andrew James Bayramian

Alvin Charles Erlandson

Thomas M Spinka

Craig W Siders

Constantin L Haefner

Techniques are provided for scaling the average power of high-energy solid-state lasers to high values of average output power while maintaining high efficiency. An exemplary technique combines a gas-cooled-slab amplifier architecture with a pattern of amplifier pumping and extraction in which pumping is continuous and in which only a small fraction of the energy stored in the amplifier is extracted on any one pulse. Efficient operation is achieved by propagating many pulses through the amplifier during each period equal to the fluorescence decay time of the gain medium, so that the preponderance of the energy cycled through the upper laser level decays through extraction by the amplified pulses rather than through fluorescence decay.

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Livermore, CA, United States of America

Thomas C Galvin