Near-diffraction-limited semiconductor disk lasers

High power semiconductor disk lasers (SDLs) with near-diffraction limited beam quality were demonstrated. The influence of the incident angle, operation temperature, cavity length and curvature radius of the output coupler mirror on the beam quality were investigated. The condition for near-diffraction limited beam quality was analyzed. Choosing the pump spot size 10%–20% smaller than the fundamental mode size is the roughly optimized condition for achieving near-diffraction limited beam quality in SDLs. Finally, the SDL with an output power of 12.9 W and M2