Beam shaping for kilowatt fiber-coupled diode lasers by using one-step beam cutting-rotating of prisms

The beam quality mismatch of laser diode stacks in both axes limits many direct applications for fiber or solid laser pumping and material processing. In this paper, a one-step cutting-rotating beam shaping system has been designed to homogenize the beam quality of two polarization-multiplexing laser diode stacks. Coupling laser diode stacks consisting of eight bars into a standard fiber with a core diameter of 600 μm and an NA of 0.22 is achieved. The simulative result shows that the system will have an output power over 1056 W. By using the technique, the production of compact and high brightness fiber-coupling diode lasers can be directly used for laser cladding and laser surface hardening processes.