We report on a ceramic Yb:LuAG thin-disk laser in continuous wave operation. The Yb:LuAG ceramic was fabricated using solid-state reactive sintering method. In multi-mode operation in open-air, an output power of 1.74 kW with an optical-to-optical efficiency of 65.0% and slope efficiency of 71.2% was obtained. In near-fundamental mode operation we obtained an output power of 1.29 kW and an average beam quality factor of M2 = 1.44 with an optical-to-optical efficiency of 48.2%. The near-fundamental mode result was realized with a simple evacuated, stable resonator cavity with just the thin-disk gain medium and output coupler. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is not only the first time more than 1 kW has been demonstrated from a ceramic Yb:LuAG medium, but this is also currently the brightest continuous wave Yb-doped ceramic laser.

We report on a Yb:YAG thin-disk laser with 1.1 kW output power and beam quality factor M²<1.4 using a simple stable resonator comprising just a single cavity mirror and a single thin disk, without the use of any aspherical elements or any adaptive optics. An optical-to-optical efficiency of 40% was obtained. The cavity was designed to give good beam quality and low misalignment sensitivity to maintain stable and robust laser operation throughout the changes in the thin-disk curvature. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time an output power beyond 1 kW has been achieved from a single thin-disk laser in near fundamental mode operation (M²<1.4).

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