## 1 Introduction  
The research and development of crystalline Raman yellow lasers currently is one of the mainstreams of solid-state laser technology. The most recent review [1] partially describes the progress in this field. The interest of most research groups at present is concentrated on Raman lasers, pumped by DPSS lasers and operating in CW mode or in pulse mode with a low pulse energy (typically less than 1 mJ) and a high pulse repetition rate, above \(10^{5}\) Hz. This tendency is confirmed in [1] as well as in the most comprehensive previous reviews [2; 3]. Also, all these reviews only describe the numerous configurations and optical schemes of these lasers, but do not include important information about the relation between the Raman laser characteristics and the characteristics of pump radiation or the laser cavity configuration.  
There are important applications (medical treatment, photography, etc.), which require yellow pulse bursts with a high (above 100 mJ) pulse energy. The generation of light bursts with multijoule energy at 589 nm by a Raman laser, based on a potassium gadolinium tungstate crystal (KGW), pumped by 532 nm radiation from a nanosecond Nd: YAG laser, was realized for the first time in our work [4]. The laser generated a 10 ms burst with a total energy of more than 10 J, consisting of 75-78 pulses with each pulse having a relatively high, 120-150 mJ, energy. Optimization and improvement of such lasers, first of all, requires optimizing the conditions for generating single high-energy pulses. In the present paper, we study the impact of the laser cavity configuration and pump radiation intensity on the characteristics of KGW Raman lasers, generating single nanosecond pulses at 589 nm with an energy of 100-300 mJ.  
The typical pump spot size in low-energy lasers, reviewed in [1; 2; 3], is less than 0.2 mm. To generate high-energy pulses with a nanosecond duration without damaging the optical components, here, similar to in our previous work [4], we increased the pump spot size to several millimeters and produced pumping with spatially homogeneous 532 nm radiation. Subsequently, an over 100-fold increase in the Fresnel number results in significant changes to the laser cavity mode structure, which can affect both the energy and spatial characteristics of lasers.  
The 589 nm radiation in this work, similar to [2; 3; 4], was selectively generated by cascade Raman conversion: 532 nm\(\rightarrow\)559 nm (first Stokes order)\(\rightarrow\)589 nm (second Stokes order). The 559 nm radiation is trapped inside a high-Q cavity and serves as a pump for 589 nm generation; only 589 nm radiation comes out from the cavity. The spatial characteristics of second Stokes generation via such a process and the influence of the cavity configuration on 589 nm radiation characteristics have not been studied previously.  
It should be pointed out that some features of first Stokes order generation in crystalline Raman lasers with an increased Fresnel number were investigated in [5; 6; 7; 8; 9]. Unfortunately, the spatial characteristics in these publications are insufficiently presented, without important details and the required generalizations, and thus add little to the understanding of Raman laser operation.  
In accordance with the above, we represent for the first time the results of a systematic study of the energy and spatial characteristics of yellow 589 nm generation in high-energy KGW Raman lasers, using flat, stable spherical and unstable cavities with different pump parameters and a relatively large pumping spot size.