Abstract

Efficient laser pumping of solid-state amplifiers, which requires good spatial overlap between the signal beam and the gain, can be difficult to achieve using pump beams with irregular intensity profiles (hot spots).¹ Hot spots appear readily in the output of a high power Nd:YAG oscillator-amplifier, and they may be exacerbated by frequency doubling. Many techniques for reducing hot spots significantly reduce the available output power and increase the system's complexity. The random binary-phase plate (RBPP) can remove hot spots with minimal decrease in power or increase in complexity.²

© 1990 Optical Society of America