title: Stability of a laser cavity with non-parabolic phase transformation elements.
abstract: In this paper we present a general approach to determine the stability of a laser cavity which can include non-conventional phase transformation elements. We consider two pertinent examples of the detailed investigation of the stability of a laser cavity firstly with a lens with spherical aberration and thereafter a lens axicon doublet to illustrate the implementation of the given approach. In the particular case of the intra-cavity elements having parabolic surfaces, the approach comes to the well-known stability condition for conventional laser resonators namely 0 ≤ (1-z/R(1))(1-z/R(2)) ≤ 1.
authors.affiliation: CSIR National Laser Centre, PO Box 395, Pretoria 0001, South Africa. ILitvin@csir.co.za
authors.forename: Igor A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Litvin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007834:Lasers; D007909:Lenses; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D020349:Surface Plasmon Resonance / Q000295:instrumentation*