Mode composition of radiation from waveguide gas lasers

Calculations are made of the mode composition of radiation emerging from a waveguide laser. Allowance is made for all types of resonator losses and also for a spatially inhomogeneous distribution of the population inversion. Using a two-mode model, it is shown that a transverse inhomogeneity of the inversion results in efficient filtering of higher-order modes even in the case of identical diffraction losses for the different modes.