Effects of reflectivity profile and gain saturation in Nd:YAG lasers with super-Gaussian mirrors

Unstable resonators with radially variable reflectivity output mirrors provide a wide filling of the active medium without any cost in beam quality as for traditional unstable resonators with totally reflecting hard edge output couplers Among the proposed variable reflectivity devices, the super-Gaussian mirrors, easily implemented by thin film deposition techniques, are especially promising to achieve high energy diffraction-limited beams3,4 and are gaining the interest of User manufacturers.