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222 So l i d - S t at e La s e r s Nd:YAG Ceramic ThinZag® High-Power Laser Development 223

average powers in excess of 100 kW in final testing on the JHPSSL
program.

9.2 Summary
This chapter presented an overview of the approach, history, and cur-
rent state of scaling Nd:YAG ceramic ThinZag lasers to significant
power levels using a single-aperture power oscillator architecture.
These lasers are compact and scalable to 100 kW and higher power
levels. Recently average power levels in excess of 100-kW output
were achieved in final government testing of the JHPSSL program. A
critical issue, as with all very high power solid-state lasers, is achiev-
ing excellent beam quality at the highest powers.

Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense
Technical Center, SMDC-RDTC-TDD, in Huntsville, Alabama, under
contract W9113M-05-C-0217, with funding from the Department of
Defense (DOD) High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office, in Albu-
querque, New Mexico, and from the office of the Secretary of the
Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASA-ALT).
The authors wish to acknowledge the excellent technical assistance
of R. Hayes for his creative design contributions to the ThinZag device.
We also thank R. Budny and M. Trainor, for their invaluable opera-
tional support during the course of this research, and M. Foote, for his
excellent insights into phase control of this device. We also acknowl-
edge the support of W. Russell and S. Flintoff in the assembly of the
ThinZag device. We also thank I. Sadovnik, J. Moran, and C. vonRosen-
berg for their support on thermal analysis of the laser module.

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