Liquid-cooled neodymium-glass disk laser

An investigation was made of a disk laser with 10³ cm³ neodymium-glass active element. The use of deuterated water as an immersion and cooling medium made it possible to achieve an efficiency of about 1%. The output characteristics of the laser were not affected by an increase in the pulse repetition frequency to 0.1 Hz and thermal distortions increased the divergence by not more than 2'.