Methods For Scaling High Average Power Laser Performance

High average power (HAP) solid state laser devices have been under development for over ten years at the General Electric-company and typically operate in the 10-100W HAP range. It has recently been recognized that such lasers may be scaled into the 1-100kW p9tcwr regime by taking advantage of favorable new materials properties2-4 i novel geometrcsh,', new techniques for increasing the fracture strength of thermally stressed surfaces, and by employing optical phased arrays 3. Here we review previously presented scaling laws for all HAP devices of current interest and indicate the modifications to those laws imposed by well-known scaling limitations such as amplified spontaneous emission and optically induced damage. In addition, we present for the first time a new limitation imposed upon HAP scaling due to fracture (or Wiebull) statistics and investigate its consequences for scaling and configuring constant probability of failure systems.