Experimental evaluation of an unstable ring resonator with 90 degrees beam rotation: HiQ experimental results

The first experimental results on a confocal unstable resonator with 90 degrees beam rotation (UR90 or HiQ) are presented. A beam quality of 1.06 was observed, and it varied by a maximum of 0.08 over a resonator misalignment range of 1 mrad. The outcoupled beam's polarization was circular. Reverse mode suppression was achieved on UR90 with a suppressed vs unsuppressed ratio of 115:1. Measurable reverse mode suppression was obtained with as little as 2% of the full reverse mode strength. Most of these results are compared with those for a conventional ring resonator.