Frequency doubled high-power disk lasers in pulsed and continuous-wave operation

Sascha Weiler; Alexander Hangst; Christian Stolzenburg; Ivo Zawischa; Dirk Sutter; Alexander Killi; Steffen Kalfhues; Uwe Kriegshaeuser; Marco Holzer; David Havrilla

doi:10.1117/12.906540

6 February 2012 Frequency doubled high-power disk lasers in pulsed and continuous-wave operation

Sascha Weiler, Alexander Hangst, Christian Stolzenburg, Ivo Zawischa, Dirk Sutter, Alexander Killi, Steffen Kalfhues, Uwe Kriegshaeuser, Marco Holzer, David Havrilla

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8239, High Power Laser Materials Processing: Lasers, Beam Delivery, Diagnostics, and Applications; 823907 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.906540
Event: SPIE LASE, 2012, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

The disk laser with multi-kW output power in infrared cw operation is widely used in today's manufacturing, primarily in the automotive industry. The disk technology combines high power (average and/or peak power), excellent beam quality, high efficiency and high reliability with low investment and operating costs. Additionally, the disk laser is ideally suited for frequency conversion due to its polarized output with negligible depolarization losses. Laser light in the green spectral range (~515 nm) can be created with a nonlinear crystal. Pulsed disk lasers with green output of well above 50 W (extracavity doubling) in the ps regime and several hundreds of Watts in the ns regime with intracavity doubling are already commercially available whereas intracavity doubled disk lasers in continuous wave operation with greater than 250 W output are in test phase. In both operating modes (pulsed and cw) the frequency doubled disk laser offers advantages in existing and new applications. Copper welding for example is said to show much higher process reliability with green laser light due to its higher absorption in comparison to the infrared. This improvement has the potential to be very beneficial for the automotive industry's move to electrical vehicles which requires reliable high-volume welding of copper as a major task for electro motors, batteries, etc.

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Sascha Weiler, Alexander Hangst, Christian Stolzenburg, Ivo Zawischa, Dirk Sutter, Alexander Killi, Steffen Kalfhues, Uwe Kriegshaeuser, Marco Holzer, and David Havrilla "Frequency doubled high-power disk lasers in pulsed and continuous-wave operation", Proc. SPIE 8239, High Power Laser Materials Processing: Lasers, Beam Delivery, Diagnostics, and Applications, 823907 (6 February 2012); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.906540

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