In both scientific and industrial laser beam applications is essential for users to know what could be expected from the laser beam. That is why analysis of the laser beam parameters is very important during laser use in various industrial and scientific applications. To describe the beam one can use a beam quality factor M 2 that characterizes the degree of imperfection of a laser beam. There are many methods of beam quality determination. The most common way is to use a device based on techniques described in the International Standard ISO11146 "Test methods for laser beam parameters: Beam widths, divergence angle and beam propagation factor". For example we can use M2-sensor that we design and produce in our Lab. The measurement of the beam quality factor according to ISO11146 is not a simple procedure and might take a long time. And for some applications fast beam quality determination is needed. Moreover sometimes it is not necessary to know the exact value of M 2 , only estimation of M 2 is just needed. And for the beam quality estimation we suggest to use Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. With this sensor we can easily and fast measure the wavefront of the beam and then according to the wavefront calculate M 2 . The comparison of two sensors is presented. Advantages and disadvantages are pointed out.

A special type of resonator with an intracavity wide-aperture active mirror was built, and a concave spherical bimorph active corrector was investigated. An increase of laser beam quality by a factor of 2-2.5 was achieved in a multimode regime of laser generation with an intracavity-controlled mirror. It was shown that various radiation mode structures could be formed at the laser output and in the far-field zone.

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We discuss the formation of a specified super-Gaussian intensity distribution of a fundamental mode by means of an intracavity controlled mirror, which is a water-cooled bimorph flexible mirror equipped with four controlling electrodes. Analysis has confirmed the possibility to form fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-order super-Gaussian intensity distributions at the output of the stable resonators of industrial cw CO(2) and YAG:Nd(3+) lasers. We present the results of the experimental formation of fourth-order and sixth-order super-Gaussian fundamental modes at the output of a cw CO(2) laser by means of an intracavity flexible mirror. We observed an increase in power up to 12% and an enlargement of the peak value of the far-field intensity by as much as 1.6 times that with a Gaussian TEM(00) mode of the cw CO(2) laser.

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