This article is based on a series of talks presented by personnel of The Perkin-Elmer Corporation at a symposium held in September 1967 and thereafter brought up to date for inclusion in the APPLIED OPTICS feature discussing Interferometry vs Spectroscopy.

Experimental performance of several different unstable resonators with annual cylindrical mode volumes is reported. Laser output beam quality and its sensitivity to resonator component misalignments and figure errors are described. Near diffraction-limited beam quality was obtained from an annular cylindrical He-Xe laser employing a half-symmetric unstable resonator with an intracavity axicon.

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