As the technology matures, scientists fine-tune performance.Dr. Adolf Giesen and Jochen Speiser, University of Stuttgart, and Rigo Peters, Christian Kränkel and Dr. Klaus Petermann, University of HamburgThe thin-disk laser is a diode-pumped solid-state laser that produces high output power with both high efficiency and excellent beam quality. Since the first demonstration of the principle, by Adolf Giesen at the University of Stuttgart in 1993,1 the continuous-wave output power extracted from a single disk has increased to more than 5 kW. In recent years, researchers have concentrated on finding new materials for thin-disk lasers. 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