Abstract
In recent years Nd;YAG lasers with output power >1 kW have been developed.1,2 In these lasers stable multimode resonators are typically used and the output beam divergence is 30–100 times greater than the diffraction limit.1 Unstable resonators with radially variable reflectivity mirrors are potentially the most appropriate solution to extract high-power diffraction-limited beams,3 On account of the strong pump-induced thermal lensing of Nd:YAG rods, however, the use of unstable resonators in high average power Nd:YAG lasers is not trivial. The requirements to be satisfied for a practical application can be summarized as follows: (i) low roundtrip magnification with a limited variation with pump power; (ii) mode matching to the rod cross-section with limited variation of the mode size in the rod with the pump power; (iii) low misalignment sensitivity.
© 1992 Optical Society of America
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