Tuesday, September 11, 2007

What is laser mode?

I posted this question some time ago. It might be a good time to answer this before questions pile up.

There are basically 'two kinds of laser modes': transverse mode and longitudinal mode. Sometimes, transverse modes are labeled as TEM modes, such as TEM00, TEM01, TEM11. Longitudinal modes are also called cavity modes or axial modes. TBC