Average patterns and symmetry in wide aperture lasers

This work has derived a model from first principles and by integrating it numerically, both using the full integral-differential equations and by using a decomposition of the field onto the cavity modes. Both these techniques produce average patterns that are in good agreement with experimental patterns of a CO/sub 2/ laser. The bi-orthogonal decomposition technique is then applied to the laser patterns in order to study the entropy of the patterns and to detect the formation of multimode coherent structures that are more suitable than the empty cavity modes to study the average distribution of energy.