Stable 500 kW average power of infrared light in a finesse 35 000 enhancement cavity
Xuemei Lu, R. Chiche, Kévin Dupraz, Fatematuj Johora, A. Martens, D. Nutarelli, Y. Peinaud, V. Soskov, A. Stocchi, F. Zomer, C. Michel, Laurent Pinard, E. Cormier, Jérôme Lhermite, X. Liu, Qili Tian, Lixin Yan, Wenhui Huang, Chuanxiang Tang, V. N. Fedosseev, E. Granados, B. A. Marsh
Abstract
Advances in laser technology over the past 25 years have been impressive, in particular, for the Ytterbium technology where, nowadays, kilowatt-class laser systems are available. This technology also led to the possibility to provide hundreds of kilowatts of laser power by the use of enhancement cavities. We report here on the demonstration of a stable 500 kW average laser power in a high-finesse enhancement cavity. It paves the way toward systems providing laser power in excess of 1 MW and opens the door to a breakthrough in a variety of future applications.