Coherence growth of XeCl laser radiation in Gaussian cavities

Summary form only given. The coherence theory in the space-frequency domain has been recently used to study the time evolution of the cross-spectral density of a spatially incoherent beam launched through an iterated sequence of lenses and Gaussian apertures. The global degree of spatial coherence, the beam spot size and the radius of wavefront curvature have been calculated at each transit in the cavity and the steady-state values of the beam parameters have been given in a closed form. This model has been first tested to characterize time evolution of laser beam parameters provided by a plane-parallel cavity with a Gaussian reflectivity mirror applied to a XeCl laser.