Coherent combination of fiber amplifiers with arbitrary optical phase differences

Coherent laser beam combining potentially provides an opportunity to achieve extremely high brightness of the output beam, permitting high on-target power density. All passive phasing techniques are limited by existence of optical path differences of individual fiber amplifiers. Cold-cavity theory predicts fast decrease in efficiency of coherent fiber laser beam combining with number of lasers. Experiments demonstrated in such systems that high degree of phasing takes place for laser array of up to 16 lasers. Origins of this illusory contradiction will be analyzed in the paper. Effects of laser wavelength self-adjustment and non-linearity of gain will be discussed.

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