First experimental demonstration of coherent beam combining of more than 100 beams

Abstract

Coherent beam combining of 107 beams has been demonstrated for the first time to the best of our knowledge. When the system was in closed loop, the pattern in far-field was stable and the fringe contrast was > 96 % . The impact of the dynamic tilt error, the piston error, and power inconsistency was theoretically analyzed. Meanwhile, the distribution law of dynamic tilt error was estimated and the correlation of the tilt dithering of different axis was analyzed statistically. The ratio of power in the central lobe was ∼ 22.5 % . The phase residue error in the closed loop was ∼ λ / 22 , which was evaluated by the root-mean-square error of the signal generated from the photoelectric detector.

Towards Ultimate High-power Scaling: Coherent Beam Combing of Fiber Lasers

“…The implementation of tiled aperture geometry for the CBC systems are mainly realized through four configurations: collimator arrays, micro-lens arrays, fiber bundle, and multicore fibers/photonic crystal fibers (MCFs and MC-PCFs). There are excellent demonstrations of CBC of multiple fiber lasers in an array scheme [148][149][150][151][152][153][154]. This architecture is a promising approach to power scaling by increasing the number of lasers.…”

Sidelobe suppression for coherent beam combining with laser beams placed along a Fermat spiral

“…Sidelobe suppression is an important issue, not only in CBC systems, but also in many other fields of research, such as super-oscillation in optics, which is one kind of destructive interference of light with different frequencies at some points at small intervals [14][15][16] . Increasing the number of the laser beams is a promising approach to improve the output power of the main lobe [17] . However, the large number of laser beams brings about the difficulty for the phase control [18,19] .…”

PISTIL interferometry: a modular, plug-and-play metrology mean for diagnosis of coherently combined laser arrays

“…If several phase control schemes exist as of today, such as SPGD, LOCSET, interferometry-based or phase mask means [10][11][12][13][14][15], the large increase in combined sources [16][17][18], overall optical bench management, phase perturbations (turbulence, blooming) [19], made it necessary to develop an external independent phase control mean.…”