Incoherent Combining of High-Power Fibers Lasers for Long-Range Directed Energy Applications (original) (raw)
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IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, 2000
High-power fiber lasers can be incoherently combined to form the basis of a directed high-energy laser system which is highly efficient, compact, robust, low-maintenance and has a long operating lifetime. This approach has a number of advantages over other beam combining methods. We present results of the first field demonstration of incoherent beam combining using kilowatt-class, single-mode fiber lasers. The experiment combined four fiber lasers using a beam director consisting of individually controlled steering mirrors. Propagation efficiencies of 90%, at a range of 1.2 km, with transmitted continious-wave power levels of 3 kW were demonstrated in moderate atmospheric turbulence. We analyze the propagation of combined single-mode and multimode beams in atmospheric turbulence and find good agreement between theory, simulations and experiments.
Advanced High-Power Near-Infrared Fiber Lasers
2005
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Towards Ultimate High-Power Scaling: Coherent Beam Combining of Fiber Lasers
Photonics
Fiber laser technology has been demonstrated as a versatile and reliable approach to laser source manufacturing with a wide range of applicability in various fields ranging from science to industry. The power/energy scaling of single-fiber laser systems has faced several fundamental limitations. To overcome them and to boost the power/energy level even further, combining the output powers of multiple lasers has become the primary approach. Among various combining techniques, the coherent beam combining of fiber amplification channels is the most promising approach, instrumenting ultra-high-power/energy lasers with near-diffraction-limited beam quality. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the progress of coherent beam combining for both continuous-wave and ultrafast fiber lasers. The concept of coherent beam combining from basic notions to specific details of methods, requirements, and challenges is discussed, along with reporting some practical architectures for both conti...
Developing Pulsed Fiber Lasers
2007
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Comparison of Spectral Beam Combining Approaches for High Power Fiber Laser Systems
Frontiers in Optics 2008/Laser Science XXIV/Plasmonics and Metamaterials/Optical Fabrication and Testing, 2008
Spectral Beam Combination (SBC) of multiple fiber laser outputs has been shown to be an effective way to scale the power of fiber laser systems while maintaining near-diffraction-limited beam quality. The fiber SBC system maintains many of the key advantages of individual fiber lasers, such as high efficiency, excellent beam quality independent of output power and relaxed thermal management requirements. Several approaches to spectral beam combination have been demonstrated including single grating in linear oscillator, single grating in master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA), dual grating MOPA and dual grating ring oscillator configurations. Each of these variations has certain advantages in terms of the system design and fiber laser requirements. In this paper we analyze the different approaches and compare them in terms of combined beam quality, line-width requirements of the individual fiber laser channels, power scalability and system complexity. The results obtained using the different SBC approaches at Aculight are summarized in the context of this analysis.
Next Generation Large Mode Area Fiber Technologies for High Power Fiber Laser Arrays
2012
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