A direct-liquid-cooled Nd:YLF thin disk laser resonator is presented, which features the use of refractive index matching liquid (RIML) as coolant. Highly uniform pump intensity distribution with rectangular shape is realized by using metallic planar waveguides. Much attention has been paid on the design of the gain module, including how to achieve excellent cooling ability with multi-channel coolers and how to choose the doping levels of the crystals for realizing well-distributed pump absorption. The flow velocity of the coolant is found to be a key parameter for laser performance and optimized to keep it in laminar flow status for dissipating unwanted heat load. A single channel device is used to measure the convective heat transfer coefficient (CHTC) at different flow velocities. Accordingly, the thermal stress in the disk is analyzed numerically and the maximum permissible thermal load is estimated. Experimentally, with ten pieces of a-cut Nd:YLF thin disks of different doping levels, a linear polarized laser with an average output power of 1120 W is achieved at the pump power of 5202 W, corresponding to an optical-optical efficiency of 21.5%, and a slope efficiency of 30.8%. Furthermore, the wavefront aberration of the gain module is measured to be quite weak, with a peak to valley (PV) value of 4.0 μm when it is pumped at 5202 W, which enables the feasibility of its application in an unstable resonator. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of kilowatt-level direct-‘refractive index matching liquid’-cooled Nd:YLF thin disk laser resonator.

A mode-locked fiber laser with pulse duration of 4.8 ps and repetition rate of 30 kHz is amplified by end-pumped Nd:YVO ₄ amplifiers and side-pumped Nd:YAG amplifiers. The output power is amplified up to 31.8 W, achieving a pulse peak power of more than 100 MW and a gain of 59 dB. The beam quality is well preserved with M2 factor of 1.26, based on the method of aberration self compensation. The laser beam size in amplifiers is optimized to prevent the unwanted damage due to the high pulse peak power density by using two different types of pumping scheme. It is demonstrated to be an ideal laser source for higher harmonic generation due to high peak power and good beam quality.

An immersed liquid cooling slab laser is demonstrated with deionized water as the coolant and a Nd:YAG slab as the gain medium. Using waveguides, a highly uniform pump beam distribution is achieved, and the flow velocity distribution is also optimized in the channels of the gain module (GM). At various flow velocities, the convective heat transfer coefficient (CHTC) is obtained. Experimentally, a maximum output power of 434 W is obtained with an optical–optical efficiency of 27.1% and a slope efficiency of 36.6%. To the best of our knowledge, it is the highest output power of an immersed liquid cooling laser oscillator with a single Nd:YAG slab.

Due to their narrow beam waist size, high intensity, and long propagation distance, photonic nanojets (PNJs) can be used in various fields such as nanoparticle sensing, optical subwavelength detection, and optical data storage. In this paper, we report a strategy to realize an SPP-PNJ by exciting a surface plasmon polariton (SPP) on a gold-film dielectric microdisk. In detail, an SPP is excited by the grating–coupling method, then it irradiates the dielectric microdisk to form an SPP-PNJ. The characteristics of the SPP-PNJ, including maximum intensity, full width at half maximum (FWHM), and propagation distance, are studied by using finite difference time domain (FDTD) numerical solutions. The results demonstrate that the proposed structure can produce a high-quality SPP-PNJ, the maximum quality factor of which is 62.20, and the propagation distance of the SPP-PNJ is 3.08 λ. Furthermore, the properties of the SPP-PNJ can be modified flexibly by changing the thickness and refractive index of the dielectric microdisk.