Regenerative ring-laser design by use of an intracavity diffractive mode-selecting element.
We report what we believe to be the first application of diffractive phase elements for transverse mode selection in laser ring resonators. We show that this resonator type offers several advantages over Fabry-Pérot resonators with diffractive mirrors. The design for a regenerative ring resonator that produces an eighth-order super-Gaussian intensity profile beam is presented. Numerical simulations, including modeling of the gain saturation and experimental tests, have been carried out to demonstrate the performance of this approach for cw and pulsed operations.