Spatial and temporal filtering of a 10-W Nd:YAG laser with a Fabry--Perot ring-cavity premode cleaner

We report on the use of a fixed-spacer Fabry-Perot ring cavity to filter spatially and temporally a 10-W laser-diode-pumped Nd:YAG master-oscillator power amplifier. The spatial filtering leads to a 7.6-W TEM (00) beam with 0.1% higher-order transverse mode content. The temporal filtering reduces the relative power fluctuations at 10 MHz to 2.8x10(-9)/ radicalHz, which is 1 dB above the shot-noise limit for 50 mA of detected photocurrent.