Edge-pumped, folded zig-zag Nd:YAG slab laser

 We report the design and performance of conduction-cooled, edge-pumped, folded zig-zag continuous wave Nd:YAG slab laser. The Nd:YAG slab is pumped with waveguide coupled laser diode bars. The coupling efficiency of waveguide to laser diode radiation is 97%. In a folded zig-zag resonator, a maximum output power of 37 W in multimode operation is achieved for an incident pump power of nearly 180 W on the Nd:YAG slab. This corresponds to an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 20% and slope efficiency of 32%. We obtained more than 10 W of output power with the beam quality factors Mx2 in the width dimension and My2 in the thickness dimension equal to 8.