High power Er:YAP laser at 2.92 μm based on incoherent beam combining

Abstract We report on a high-power Er:YAP laser system run by incoherent beam combining at room temperature. A stable continuous-wave (CW) laser beam at 2.92 μm with an average power of 8.2 W is generated. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power achieved from CW Er3+-doped solid-state lasers above 2.9 μm. No power saturation is observed, indicating that the output power can be further scaled up. Moreover, the experimental results show that the beam quality is maintained during the beam combining process.