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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. Key words: Active mirror, intracavity correction, solid-state laser.

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 C[O.sub.2] and YAG:[Nd.sup.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 C[O.sub.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 TE[M.sub.00] mode of the cw C[O.sub.2] laser. OCIS codes: 140.0140, 010.1080, 140.3300.