Cooling of a pulsed energy-storage rep-rated Yb:YAG laser disk by heat sink

The thermal effect is one of the biggest obstacles that the solid laser heads into high power and high beam quality. The characteristic of heat-storage mechanism and heat conduct behavior about the phase change material is studied in this text. Inserting appropriate metal pieces or graphite can elevate the conduct coefficient of phage change material effectively. Researches are performed on the cooling characteristics of the pulsed energy - storage rep-rated large-aperture end-pumped Yb:YAG disk laser with non-uniform heat source by forced convection cooling in a narrow passage and heat sink. Two cooling schemes are selected; they are forced convection cooling with water, heat sink with phase change material. Numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the temperature and thermal stress distributions of the laser disk. The calculation results show that the cooling scheme using phase change material heat sink is the best, which may practicality applied.