Deep ultraviolet lasers have various applications in industries and scientific researches. For 266-nm ultra- violet (UV) laser generation, the good beam quality of 1064-nm laser and the elimination of gray-tracking effect of KTP crystal are two key factors. Using a dynamically stable resonator design, 1064-nm laser with an average power of 52 W is realized with repetition rate of 16 kHz. The measured M^2 factor characterizing the beam quality is 1.5. By the elimination of gray-tracking effect of KTP crystal, an 18-W green laser is realized with the M2 factor of 1.6. Using a BBO crystal for the fourth harmonic generation, a 1.9-W 266-nm UV laser is achieved.
Spherical aberrations of the thermal lens of the active media are severe when solid state lasers are strongly pumped. The fundamental mode profile deteriorates due to the aberrations. Self-consistent modes of a resonator with aberrations are calculated by using the Fox-Li diffraction iterative algorithm. Calculation results show that the aberration induced fundamental mode beam quality deterioration depends greatly on the resonator design. The tolerance of a flat-flat resonator to the aberration coefficient is about 30λ in the middle of stability, where λ is the wavelength of laser beam. But for a dynamically stable resonator, 2λ of spherical aberration will create diffraction loss of more than 40%, if inappropriate design criteria are used. A birefringence compensated laser resonator with two Nd:YAG rods is experimentally studied. The experimental data are in quite good agreement with simulation results.