Abstract

The appropriate combination of spherical and cylindrical mirrors allows one to arrange an unstable laser cavity with asymmetrical magnification and to generate collimated output as well. By introducing two additional cylindrical mirrors into the cavity the aberration problems of tilted mirror systems are avoided. On the other hand, this modification is a low-cost alternative to cavities with diamond-turned mirrors with ellipsoidal surface curvature. In the geometrical-optics limit there exists a unique combination of mirror radii of curvature for a given ratio of magnification at fixed distances between the mirrors.

© 1981 Optical Society of America

Unstable optical resonators with linear magnification

Martin E. Smithers and Thomas R. Ferguson
Appl. Opt. 23(20) 3718-3724 (1984)

Unstable optical resonators with tilted spherical mirrors

Charles Cason, R. W. Jones, and J. F. Perkins
Opt. Lett. 2(6) 145-147 (1978)

Mode properties of a strip confocal unstable resonator with saturable gain

M. J. Smith
Appl. Opt. 20(9) 1611-1620 (1981)

Unstable–stable resonators with toroidal mirrors

A. Borghese, R. Canevari, V. Donati, and L. Garifo
Appl. Opt. 20(20) 3547-3552 (1981)

Confocal unstable-resonator semiconductor laser

J. Salzman, R. Lang, A. Larson, and A. Yariv
Opt. Lett. 11(8) 507-509 (1986)