Advancement of Rotary Disk Laser Concept for Military and Commercial Uses

Power scaling efforts in conventional "static gain medium" solid state lasers have now reached an insurmountable barrier due to the fundamental problem of beam propagation through thermally aberrated "static" solid-state laser medium. Rotary disk lasers can overcome this roadblock by introducing a new "control element" in the laser design, and that is "disk motion". The rotary disk laser was invented by the Sparkle Optics founder in 1987 at Stanford. The concept has not yet resulted in a commercial product. Sparkle Optics' goal is to develop reliable Rotary Disk Lasers as a commercial product in phase II. Sparkle Optics founder has designed and built two rotary disk modules, both of which have been delivered to the Air Force Research Laboratory. One of the rotary disk modules was recently tested by the Air Force researchers, and they were able to build the world's highest average power rotary disk lasers in Nd-YAG and Nd-glass. Their tests have a great potential to serve Air Force's Directed Energy applications in the tens of kilowatt power regime. In the commercial market, the rotary disk lasers will offer the customers the highest single mode power from diode pumped solid state lasers in the near future.