Direct generation of optical bottle beams from a tightly focused end-pumped solid-state laser

Abstract

We demonstrate that various optical bottle beams can be directly generated from a tightly focused end-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser. By controlling the size of pump beam and intracavity aperture in a planoconcave cavity, we obtain well contrasting optical bottles with semiconfocal, 1/3-, and 1/5-degenerate cavity configurations. These beams result, respectively, from the superposition of the fundamental mode and the corresponding lowest degenerate transverse eigenmode, which is in-phase at their beam waists. Unlike that of our previous simulation model, this new observation is universal; it is suitable for any kind of gain media in tightly end-pumped lasers. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.