Beam quality improvement of coherent beam combining by gradient power distribution hexagonal tiled-aperture large laser array

Abstract. We investigated the beam quality improvement of a tiled-aperture coherent beam combining by changing the intensity distribution of fiber beamlets array. An optimal gradient power distribution of the beam array is found. The beam quality is improved by 12.6% with a fill factor of 0.5 with gradient distribution architecture compared with the uniform distribution. With the expansion of the array scale, the improvement of beam propagation factor is becoming more obvious. In addition, the effects of phase error and beamlet arrangement layout are also researched, which shows the propagation factor of the hexagonal ring arrangement is improved by 16.14% compared with the ring arrangement under the gradient arrangement. The effect of phase error on the combined beam quality with respect to the gradient distribution is discussed.

[1]  W. Shi,et al.  Fiber lasers and their applications [Invited]. , 2014, Applied optics.

[2]  R. Beach,et al.  Analysis of the scalability of diffraction-limited fiber lasers and amplifiers to high average power. , 2008, Optics express.

[3]  B. Hafizi,et al.  Incoherent Combining and Atmospheric Propagation of High-Power Fiber Lasers for Directed-Energy Applications , 2009, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

[4]  R. Simpson,et al.  Brightness-Scaling Potential of Actively Phase-Locked Solid-State Laser Arrays , 2007, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[5]  Jens Limpert,et al.  High average power spectral beam combining of four fiber amplifiers to 8.2 kW. , 2011, Optics letters.

[6]  Pu Zhou,et al.  Numerical analysis of the effects of aberrations on coherently combined fiber laser beams. , 2008, Applied optics.

[7]  B. Lü,et al.  Coherent and incoherent combinations of off-axis Gaussian beams with rectangular symmetry , 1999 .

[8]  Y. Jeong,et al.  Ytterbium-doped large-core fiber laser with 1.36 kW continuous-wave output power. , 2004, Optics express.

[9]  Jeffrey B. Shellan,et al.  Phased-array performance degradation due to mirror misfigures, piston errors, jitter, and polarization errors , 1985 .

[10]  Pu Zhou,et al.  Beam quality factor for coherently combined fiber laser beams , 2009 .

[11]  Zejin Liu,et al.  Power scaling analysis of tandem-pumped Yb-doped fiber lasers and amplifiers. , 2011, Optics express.

[12]  B. Lü,et al.  Beam propagation properties of radial laser arrays. , 2000, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.

[13]  D. Hanna,et al.  Ytterbium-doped silica fiber lasers: versatile sources for the 1-1.2 /spl mu/m region , 1995 .

[14]  B. Lü,et al.  Coherent and incoherent off-axis Hermite-Gaussian beam combinations. , 2000, Applied optics.

[15]  S. Belke,et al.  All-fiber 7x1 signal combiner for incoherent laser beam combining , 2011, LASE.

[16]  Jie Sun,et al.  Two-dimensional apodized silicon photonic phased arrays. , 2014, Optics letters.

[17]  Shuangchun Wen,et al.  Coherent and incoherent combining of fiber array with hexagonal ring distribution , 2009 .

[18]  Anthony E. Siegman,et al.  New developments in laser resonators , 1990, Photonics West - Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering.

[19]  P. Zhou,et al.  Review on recent progress on Yb-doped fiber laser in a variety of oscillation spectral ranges , 2012 .

[20]  Zilun Chen,et al.  Influence of turbulent atmosphere on the far-field coherent combined beam quality , 2008 .

[21]  A Yariv,et al.  Suppression of stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibers using a linearly chirped diode laser. , 2012, Optics express.

[22]  Zhou Jun,et al.  Effects of space duty cycle on the characteristics of fiber laser coherent beam combination , 2010 .

[23]  Clint Zeringue,et al.  Stimulated Brillouin scattering suppression through laser gain competition: scalability to high power. , 2010, Optics letters.