Yury SENATSKY^*, Jean-Francois BISSON¹, Jianlang LI², Akira SHIRAKAWA³, Manasadevi THIRUGNANASAMBANDAM³, and Ken-ichi UEDA³

P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 53 Leninskiy Prospekt, Moscow 119991, Russia ¹Département de physique et astronomie, Université de Moncton, 18 Antonine-Maillet, Moncton E1A 3E9, Canada ²Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China ³Institute for Laser Science, University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan

(Received January 13, 2012; Revised March 23, 2012; Accepted April 4, 2012)

Over the last twenty years, diode pumping of solid-state lasers has opened new prospects for the mode control and formation of Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) beams, enabling a large variety of applications. Experiments on scalar and vector LG modes selection in Nd³⁺- and Yb³⁺-doped ceramics and crystal lasers carried out at the Institute for Laser Science, Tokyo are reviewed. Selection of LG modes from low to high orders using intra-cavity elements, polarization-selective mirrors, or shaping the pump beam profile, is considered. Illustrations of record-high-order LG hollow modes, multi-ring modes with highly directional propagation properties, characteristics of cw and pulsed lasers with radially or azimuthally polarized beams of high polarization purity are presented. General solutions of the wave equation for the axi-symmetric electric field, which describe LG beams of various profiles, are proposed for data analysis. In parallel, a short review on LG modes selection studies carried out at other laboratories is given.

Key words: diode pumped solid state lasers, Laguerre–Gaussian modes selection

^*E-mail address: senatsky@sci.lebedev.ru