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We demonstrated a 120-W side-pumped Tm:YAG laser with compound parabolic concentrators (CPC's) to couple the pump light into the laser rod. The optical-to-optical efficiency of this laser is 25.2% and the slope efficiency is 31.2%.At such high average power operation, we encountered severe thermal lensing in our Tm:YAG laser rod which prevented us from increasing the diode pump power due to the thermal rollover as the laser cavity become unstable. In this paper, Temperature was measured using JR camera. Temperature and stress distributions are obtained using finite element method. Those data can be used to estimate the fracture limit, the thermal lensing, the thermal distortion of the Tm:YAG laser and subsequently correct the thermal distortion using diffractive optical devices etc.

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