Increasing laser brightness by transverse mode selection-1

Tranverse mode selection increases the brightness of solid-state lasers-useful in plasma generation, microcircuit machining, drilling and nonlinear optics. This article enumerates advantages of transverse mode selection and gives the background to modes and resonators. Using mode selection solid-state lasers may become reliable with good repeatability of performance, removing their most serious drawbacks. Part 2 explains the basis of mode selection using the plano-concave resonator as an example and discusses a wide variety of resonators. Unstable resonators show particular promise for mode selection.