Beam-quality changes generated by thermally-induced spherical aberration in laser cavities

Thermally-induced spherical aberration in Nd:YAG rods is investigated. Attention is concentrated on the so-called "intensity moment formalism" to analyze the beam-quality parameter of the emitted laser beams. A number of resonance conditions that certain beam-shape parameters of any stable laser mode should fulfill are also derived, and a comparison with previously reported numerical results is presented.