Thermal and optical properties of diode side-pumped solid state laser rods

Thermal heating is a major limiting factor in scaling the average power of a solid-state laser. The relationship between the heat intensity in a laser slab and the heat transfer coefficient has been studied by considering the variations of thermal conductivity and expansion coefficient of the laser slab with temperature. In this paper, the laser rod has been studied by including its thermal, stress and optical aberration effects. It is pointed out that different heat transfer coefficients should be adopted according to different heat intensities inside the laser rod in order to obtain better pumping input as well as to optimize the cooling effects.