Stimulated emission from a cw YAG laser with an intracavity thermal nonlinearity

An analysis is made of the conditions of operation of a laser with an intracavity element ensuring feedback in respect of the structure of the output beam. It is shown that in the case of a self-focusing nonlinearity there are regions with double-valued solutions and hysteresis loops of the current supplying a flashlamp. The necessary conditions for self-stabilization of the lasing parameters and for spontaneous oscillations with a period of the order of the nonlinearity relaxation time are determined.