100-W Yb:YAG thin-disk vortex laser oscillator

Optical vortices carrying orbital angular momentum and spiral wavefront phases have garnered increasing research interest owing to their numerous applications.Here, we present a simple yet effective approach to generate powerful optical vortices directly from a thin-disk laser oscillator.The demonstrated source delivered Laguerre-Gaussian beams with an output power of up to 101 W. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power of all optical vortex laser oscillators.The high-power vortex output will have significant implications for laser ablation and micromachining at high throughput and for large-area applications.Additionally, it serves as a new platform for the further development of more complex high-power optical-vortex beams.