High energy diode-pumped sapphire face-cooled Nd:glass multi-slab amplifier

•A novel heat-removal structure based on sapphire cooled Nd:glass slab was proposed.•The thermal effect analysis results of a sapphire cooled Nd:glass assembly were shown.•A pump coupling system for slab amplifier was designed and its energy transmission, pump beam distribution were measured.•The wavefront aberration for the amplifier head was measured and its Legendre coefficients were calculated.•The energy, energy stability, near and far field profiles of a solid cooled multi-pass amplifier were presented.