Intracavity beam shaping and referenceless holography

Arbitrary coherent field distributions were synthesized inside laser resonators by intracavity shaping of the resonator modes through binary intensity filters. Examples of modal patterns generated by these “Fourier-transform laser resonators” are shown, with a discussion of the observed limitations. A “holographic Fourier-transform laser” involving both a photorefractive (BaTiO3) phase-conjugating mirror and an intracavity hologram generates complex coherent images with high intracavity diffraction efficiency. Possible applications of such light sources to volume holographic recording of diffractive optical elements will be considered.