Preferential operation of an end-pumped Nd:YAG laser in high-order Laguerre-Gauss modes.
A small Nd:YAG laser with plano-concave resonator end pumped by a dye laser is observed to possess single Laguerre-Gauss transverse modes as the lowest-loss modes. This anomalous behavior occurs when the transverse dimension of the gain spot is much smaller than the fundamental TEM(00)-mode spot size of the resonator; the Laguerre-Gauss transverse-mode order varies with resonator length.
Flood
C J
CJ
Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A7, Canada.
Giuliani
G
G
van Driel
H M
HM