Abstract
The adjustment effort required for the alignment of laser resonators with arbitrarily shaped end mirrors can be significantly reduced by folding the resonator path half-way between the two end mirrors and by slightly tilting the resonator axis. Thus the resulting resonator consists only of one diffractive mirror and a plane mirror, and the separate alignment of both diffractive end mirrors with respect to each other can be avoided. This principle is demonstrated by a Nd:YAG laser with super-Gaussian output beam. Furthermore, it is shown theoretically that the influence of phase quantization effects on the beam quality can be strongly reduced as a consequence of the tilted resonator axis.
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Büttner, A., Kowarschik, R. & Zeitner, U.D. Folded diffractive laser resonators with user-defined fundamental mode. Appl. Phys. B 81, 601–606 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-005-1893-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-005-1893-3