Disk Lasers Explained
A disk laser or active mirror (Fig.1.) is a type of solid-state laser characterized by a heat sink and laser output that are realized on opposite sides of a thin layer of active gain medium. Despite their name, disk lasers do not have to be circular; other shapes have also been tried.
Active mirrors and disk lasers
Initially, disk lasers were called active mirrors, because the gain medium of a disk laser is essentially an optical mirror with reflection coefficient greater than unity. An active mirror is a thin disk-shaped double-pass optical amplifier.
The first active mirrors were developed in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Then, the concept was developed in various research groups, in particular, the University of Stuttgart for Yb:doped glasses.
In the disk laser, the heat sink does not have to be transparent, so, it can be extremely efficient even at large transverse size of the device (Fig.1.). The increase in size allows the power scaling to many kilowatts without significant modification of the design.
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