Influence of spherical aberrations on the performance of dynamically stable resonators

Spherical aberrations of thermal lens of the active media are severe when the solid state lasers are strongly pumped. The aberrations influence the mode profile, the diffraction loss, the output power and other laser beam properties, especially for a dynamically stable resonator with large TEM₀₀-mode volume. Self-consistent modes in a resonator with aberrations are calculated using Fox-Li diffraction iterative algorithm. There are side lobes with the fundamental mode when the spherical aberration is introduced, hence the beam quality is deteriorated. The calculated results agree well with the experimental data. The beam filling factor plays an important role in the design of a laser system. The optimum value of the beam filling factor should be determined by the experimental results according to the spherical aberration effect.