Investigation of the possibilities of increasing the efficiency of neodymium glass laser amplifiers with final disk stages

A program for the calculation of the energy characteristics of amplifiers, based on the Monte Carlo method, was used to calculate the characteristics of a disk amplifying stage with a transverse pump system and an aperture of 15 cm. A study is made of the influence of various physical factors on the efficiency of an amplifier and, in particular, the role of the 0.35 ..mu.. absorption band of neodymium was identified. The results of the calculations are compared with the available experimental data. It is shown that when the laser pulse duration is 1 nsec, the efficiency of a multistage disk laser can reach approx.0.15% and the efficiency of the final stage can be approx.0.3%.