Improving the output beam quality of multimode laser resonators

Multimode laser operation is usually characterized by high output power, yet its beam quality is inferior to that of a laser with single TEM00 mode operation. Here we present an efficient approach for improving the beam quality of multimode laser resonators. The approach is based on splitting the intra-cavity multimode beam into an array of smaller beams, each with a high quality beam distribution, which are coherently added within the resonator. The coupling between the beams in the array and their coherent addition is achieved with planar interferometric beam combiners. Experimental verification, where the intra-cavity multimode beam in a pulsed Nd: YAG laser resonator is split into four Gaussian beams that are then coherently added, provides a total increase in brightness of one order of magnitude. Additional spectral measurements indicate that scaling to larger coherent arrays is possible. (C) 2005 Optical Society of America.