Spatial hole burning in thin-disk lasers and twisted-mode operation

Spatial hole burning prevents single-frequency operation of thin-disk lasers when the thin disk is used as a folding mirror. We present an evaluation of the saturation effects in the disk for disks acting as end mirrors and as folding mirrors, explaining one of the main obstacles toward single-frequency operation. It is shown that a twisted-mode scheme based on a multi-order quarter-wave plate combined with a polarizer provides an almost complete suppression of spatial hole burning and creates an additional wavelength selectivity that enforces efficient single-frequency operation.