Thermal profile modification of an active material in a laser amplifier via optical pumping results in a change in the material’s refractive index, and causes thermal expansion and stress, eventually leading to spatial phase aberrations, or even permanent material damage. For this purpose, knowledge of the 3D spatio-temporal thermal profile, which can currently only be retrieved via numerical simulations, is critical for joule-class laser amplifiers to reveal potentially dangerous thermal features within the pumped active materials. In this investigation, a detailed, spatio-temporal numerical simulation was constructed and tested for accuracy against surface thermal measurements of various end-pumped $\text{Yb}^{3+}$-doped laser-active materials. The measurements and simulations show an excellent agreement and the model was successfully applied to a joule-class $\text{Yb}^{3+}$-based amplifier currently operating in the POLARIS laser system at the Friedrich-Schiller-University and Helmholtz-Institute Jena in Germany.

Development of high energy laser sources with nanosecond pulses at several hertz values for repetition rate has been very attractive in recent years due to their great potential for practical applications. With the recent advancement in fabricating large size laser quality transparent ceramics, diode pumped solid-state laser generating pulse energy of 100 J at 10 Hz has been recently realized at HiLASE center using Yb:YAG ceramic with Cr:YAG cladding. This review discusses Yb based high energy lasers, specific laser geometries for efficient thermal management and the role of transparent ceramics in such diode pumped high-energy-class solid-state lasers around the world.