New methods of mode conversion and brightness enhancement in high-power lasers

Radially-polarized beams can be strongly amplified without significant birefringence-induced aberrations. However, further improvement of the beam-quality and brightness is desirable. We present two new methods for efficient conversion of a radially-polarized LG(0,1)* mode to a linearly-polarized nearly-Gaussian beam. In both methods, we use Mach-Zehnder-like interferometric arrangements.