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Coherent combining of a 4 kW, eight-element fiber amplifier array
C X Yu1, S J Augst, S M Redmond
1Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 244 Wood Street, Lexington, Massachusetts 02420, USA. chars@ll.mit.edu
Optics Letters
|July 19, 2011
Summary
Commercial fiber amplifiers were combined to achieve 4 kW output power. This demonstrates a viable method for high-power coherent beam combining using Yb-doped fiber amplifiers.
Area of Science:
- Optics and Photonics
- Laser Technology
- Fiber Optics
Background:
- Yb-doped fiber amplifiers are crucial components in modern laser systems.
- Coherent beam combining (CBC) is a key technique for achieving high output power while maintaining good beam quality.
Purpose of the Study:
- To characterize commercial Yb-doped fiber amplifiers for CBC applications.
- To demonstrate the feasibility of coherently combining multiple fiber amplifiers.
- To evaluate the performance of a tiled-aperture CBC system.
Main Methods:
- Characterization of individual 0.5 kW Yb-doped fiber amplifiers.
- Coherent beam combining of eight fiber amplifiers using a tiled-aperture configuration.
- Measurement of combining efficiency and beam quality (power-in-the-bucket) at full power.
Main Results:
- Commercial 0.5 kW Yb-doped fiber amplifiers are suitable for CBC.
- Eight amplifiers were combined with 78% efficiency, yielding 4 kW total output power.
- The combined beam quality was 1.25 times diffraction limited at full power.
- Beam-combining performance remained consistent across different output power levels.
Conclusions:
- Successful demonstration of high-power coherent beam combining using commercial Yb-doped fiber amplifiers.
- The tiled-aperture configuration achieved high efficiency and good beam quality.
- The results indicate the scalability and robustness of this CBC approach for high-power laser systems.
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