The 9th International Conference on Matter and Radiation at Extremes (ICMRE2026) ( ICMRE2026)

High-repetition-rate solid-state lasers delivering high energy exceeding hundred millijoules and picosecond short pulses combine excellent beam quality with robust system stability, enabling critical applications in material processing, laser medicine, and frontier scientific research. Regarding gain medium selection, following titanium-sapphire and neodymium-doped garnets, Yb:YAG (Yb:Y3Al5O12) materials have gradually become widely adopted in laser-diode-pumped solid-state picosecond laser amplifiers due to their high quantum efficiency, high saturation fluence, and distinctive emission cross-section and bandwidth. This review systematically summarizes reported results on Yb:YAG high-repetition-rate solid-state laser amplifiers operating at room and cryogenic temperatures achieving hundred-millijoule energy and picosecond pulse duration. Key output parameters including pulse energy, conversion efficiency, and beam quality are evaluated. Furthermore, prospects for applications in high-peak-power systems, optical parametric amplification, and attosecond driver technologies are discussed.
Related work encompasses aspects such as efficiency, compactness, thermal management, beam quality, and operating temperature. At room temperature, by combining thin-disk regenerative amplification, traveling-wave amplification, and chirped pulse amplification (CPA) techniques, picosecond pulses with energies ranging from several hundred millijoules to the joule level have been achieved at repetition rates varying from 10 Hz to 1 kHz, while beam quality has been improved through methods such as spectral shaping. At cryogenic temperatures, system architectures based primarily on Yb:YAG active mirrors hold promise for achieving kilowatt-level stable output at joule-level energies. Future research will continue to focus on improving beam quality, optimizing thermal management, exploring new pumping techniques, and designing novel amplification configurations. By increasing the damage threshold of optical components, enhancing single-pass amplification gain, and optimizing cavity designs, the output capability of systems for hundred‑millijoule high‑repetition‑rate Yb:YAG solid‑state picosecond laser amplification will be further advanced.
 

solid-state laser amplification; hundred-millijoule pulse; picosecond laser technology; regenerative amplification; Yb:YAG crystal