Transparent laser ceramics have been demonstrated to offer tremendous processing and design advantages in the diode-pumped solid-state laser field. Successfully developed composite Nd:YAG/Cr:YAG ceramics realized a multi-megawatt three-beam output microchip laser for efficient engine ignition. After a progress review for Giant Micro-photonics, including their wavelength extension with micro-domain controlling, we’d like to discuss the next generation of high-brightness lasers based on anisotropic ceramics. The capability of transparent anisotropic ceramics, by using a new crystal orientation process based on large magnetic anisotropy induced by 4f electrons, offers extremely high-power laser materials such as RE:FAP and patterning process for multi-function integrated monolithic solid-state lasers.

Shape design of sapphire/Nd³⁺:YAG based distributed face cooling (DFC) chip is reported with reduction of thermal effects as compared with those from a conventional Nd³⁺:YAG chip. The CW diode laser pumped round-trip cavity loss was 0.51% from a 9-disk bonded DFC chip, which was close to the theoretically calculated total Fresnel reflection loss of 0.2% from 8 Sapphire/Nd³⁺:YAG interfaces. The depolarization ratio from an 8-disk bonded DFC chip was 40 times lower than that from YAG/Nd³⁺:YAG chip. The DFC chip underwent no crack at pump power of 86 W while Nd³⁺:YAG single chip suffered crystal crack under pump power around 54 W. Over megawatt peak power from DFC tiny integrated laser is demonstrated at 1 kHz with 3-pulse burst modes. It is concluded that DFC structure could relieve thermal effects as expected.

Intense pulse pumped microlaser is proposed for high peak power and low timing jitter at high repetition rate. It is based on Intense and Fast Pulse Pump (IFPP) technique, in which fast pulse pumps up the upper-level population and then dumps it rapidly by Q-switching. That could come close to complete pumping efficiency to reduce thermal problems and contribute to suppress the timing jitter of passively Q-switched laser. In this work, linearly polarized 1064 nm beam from [100]-cut YAG/Nd3+:YAG and [110]-cut Cr4+:YAG passively Q-switched microlaser is directly guided into nonlinear crystals to obtain 532 nm and 266 nm output. By implementing IFPP concept, over 1 MW peak power, 215 ps pulse duration, 1 kHz pulses at 266 nm with reduced standard deviation timing jitter of 37 ns were obtained.

Continuous-wave $\mathrm{UV}$ radiation at $354\mathrm{nm}$ , the third harmonic of a ${\mathrm{Nd}:\mathrm{GdVO}}_4$ laser operating at $1063\mathrm{nm}$ , is reported from single-pass cascaded, first-order periodically poled ${\mathrm{MgO}:\mathrm{LiNbO}}_3$ $\left(\mathrm{PPMgLN}\right)$ crystals. A high-voltage multipulse poling method was used in order to realize $\mathrm{PPMgLN}$ with uniform domain period $\left(\Lambda \right)$ of micron-order width and 50% duty cycle along the entire crystal length. Initially, second-harmonic generation of the $1063\mathrm{nm}$ ${\mathrm{Nd}:\mathrm{GdVO}}_4$ laser at $2.1\%∕\mathrm{W}$ conversion efficiency, producing $1.15\mathrm{W}$ at $531\mathrm{nm}$ , is obtained from a $10\text{-}\mathrm{mm}$ -long $\mathrm{PPMgLN}$ with $\Lambda =6.95\mu \mathrm{m}$ . Sum frequency mixing of this $531\mathrm{nm}$ light with the residual $1063\mathrm{nm}$ fundamental radiation in a $3.6\text{-}\mathrm{mm}$ -long $\mathrm{PPMgLN}$ with $\Lambda =1.78\mu \mathrm{m}$ produces $47\mathrm{mW}$ of $\mathrm{UV}$ with $3.9\%∕\mathrm{W}∕\mathrm{cm}$ normalized conversion efficiency.

A diode radially pumped microchip Yb:YAG laser that consists of an Yb-doped core surrounded by undoped YAG of a slab shape is presented. Quasi-continuous-wave pumping of a 10-at. % Yb-doped core of $2 \mathrm{mm}\times 2 \mathrm{mm}$ square shape with pulses of 5-Hz repetition rate and 2.5% duty cycle delivers 66-W output peak power at 220-W input pump power with 0.49 slope efficiency. The best results, 112-W peak power with 0.63 slope efficiency and 0.38 optical-to-optical efficiency, were obtained with a $1.2 \mathrm{mm}\times 1.2 \mathrm{mm}$ square 15-at. % at Yb:YAG core.