Thin-disk lasers (TDLs) have made spectacular progress in the last decades both in continuous-wave (CW) and ultrafast operation. Nowadays, single thin-disk oscillators with >16 kW of CW-power have been demonstrated and ultrafast amplifiers have largely surpassed the kilowatt milestone with pulse energies in the multi-100 mJ range. This amazing development has been demonstrated in the 1 m wavelength range, using Yb-doped materials and supported by industrially available components. Motivated by both strong scientific and industrial applications, interest in expanding this performance to longer wavelength regions continues to increase. In particular, TDLs emitting directly in the short-wave mid-infrared (SW-MIR) region (2–3 m) are especially sought after, and although many early studies have been reported, most remained in the proof-of-principle stage and the potential for multi-100 W operation remained undemonstrated. Here, we report on our recent results of a single fundamental-mode CW Ho:YAG thin-disk oscillator with >100 W of power, surpassing previous single-mode TDLs by a factor of >4, and marking a first milestone in the development of high-power SW-MIR TDLs. In optimized conditions, our laser system emitting at ≈2.1 m reaches an output power of 112 W with 54.6% optical-to-optical efficiency and an M ² = 1.1. This system is ideally suited for future direct modelocking at the 100 W level, as well as for ultrafast amplification. We start the discussion with a review of the state-of-the-art of TDLs emitting directly in the vicinity of 2 m, and then discuss difficulties and possible routes both towards ultrafast operation and next possible steps for power scaling.

在过去的几十年中，薄盘激光器（TDL）在连续波（CW）和超快操作方面均取得了惊人的进步。如今，已证明具有超过16 kW CW功率的单薄盘振荡器，超快放大器的脉冲能量在100 mJ以上的范围内已大大超过了千瓦时的里程碑。使用掺Yb的材料在1 m波长范围内已经证明了这一惊人的发展，并得到了工业上可获得的组件的支持。在强大的科学和工业应用的推动下，将这种性能扩展到更长波长区域的兴趣不断增长。特别是，尤其需要直接在短波中红外（SW-MIR）区域（2-3 m）发射的TDL，尽管已经报道了许多早期研究，大多数仍处于原理验证阶段，尚未证明多100 W操作的潜力。在这里，我们报告我们最近的单基模CW Ho：YAG薄盘振荡器的最新结果，该振荡器功率> 100 W，比以前的单模TDL高出> 4倍，并标志着研发的第一个里程碑大功率SW-MIR TDL。在最佳条件下，我们的激光系统在≈2.1m处发射，达到112 W的输出功率，光对光效率为54.6％，M ²＝ 1.1。该系统非常适合将来在100 W功率下直接对接以及超快放大。我们从回顾直接在2 m附近发射的TDL的最新技术开始讨论，然后讨论实现超快速操作的困难和可能的途径以及功率缩放的下一步可能的步骤。