Design of an Nd:YAG Slab Structure for a High-power Zigzag Slab Laser Amplifier Based on a Wavefront Simulation

An Nd:YAG slab structure was designed for a high-power zigzag slab laser amplifier based on computational simulation of the wavefront distortion. For the simulation, the temperature distribution in the slab was calculated at first by thermal analysis. Then, the optical path length (OPL) was obtained by a ray tracing method for the corresponding refractive index variation inside the slab. After that, the OPL distribution of the double-pass amplified beam was calculated by summing the results obtained for the first and second passes. The amount of wavefront distortion was finally obtained as the peak-to-valley value of the OPL distribution. As a result of this study, the length and position of the gain medium were optimized by minimizing the transverse wavefront distortion. Under the optimized conditions, the transverse wavefront distortion of the double-pass amplified beam was less than 0.2 mu m for pump power of 14 kW.