DOUGHNUT-LIKE LASER-BEAM OUTPUT FORMATION BY INTRACAVITY FLEXIBLE CONTROLLED MIRROR

The formation of the given low loss and large beamwidth doughnut-like fundamental mode of stable resonator by an intracavity flexible mirror is discussed. The mirror is a bimorph one with one round and two ring controlling electrodes. An inverse propagation method is used to dete rmine the appropriate shape of the controlled mirror. The mirror repro duces the shape with minimal RMS error by combining weights of experim entally measured response functions of the mirror sample. The voltages applied to each mirror electrode are calculated. The calculations are carried out for industrial CW CO2 laser. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.