Spatial hole burning prevents single-frequency operation of thin-disk lasers
when the thin disk is used as a folding mirror. We present an evaluation of the
saturation effects in the disk for disks acting as end-mirrors and as
folding-mirrors explaining one of the main obstacles towards single-frequency
operation. It is shown that a twisted-mode scheme based on a multi-order
quarter-wave plate combined with a polarizer provides an almost complete
suppression of spatial hole burning and creates an additional wavelength
selectivity that enforces efficient single-frequency operation.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figure
