Coherent beam combining of pulsed fiber lasers with hybrid phase control

We demonstrate a scalable architecture for coherent combining of all-fiber pulsed lasers with hybrid phase control involving passive phasing and active phasing for the first time. Synchronized and passive phased pulsed laser array is built by intra-activity phase modulation. Active phase control on the passive phased pulsed laser array using stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm provides stable in-phase coherent beam combining pattern in a turbulent atmosphere. The fringe visibility is increased from 0 two 0.43 and the power encircled in the main-lobe is 1.616 times increased when the system evolves from passive phasing to hybrid phasing. The architecture can be easily scaled up to high power by increasing power of each individual laser, number of laser elements and introduction of power amplifiers, which will lead a promising way for scaleable high power coherent beam combining of pulsed lasers.     

Simultaneous spectrum and coherent combining by active phasing dual two-tone all-fiber MOPA chains

We present a new approach for simultaneous spectral and coherent combining in a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration with active phasing. Spectrally combined single-frequency seed lasers are employed as a master oscillator for the all-fiber power amplifier chain, which provides robust performance suppressing of the stimulated Brillouin scattering effect, while coherent combining of spectrally combined amplifiers with active phase control provides stable in-phase combining, despite the strong phase fluctuation. In experiments, two spectrally combined seed MOPA chains are coherently combined with a total output power of 390 W. The power of the main lobe in the closed loop is two times of that value in the open loop, and visibility of more than 75% of the long-exposure interference pattern at the receiving plane is obtained.     

多抖动法主振荡功率放大器相干合成技术

 采用多抖动相位控制方法实现了两路和三路1 Ｗ量级光纤放大器的相干合成,对实验结果进行了详细分析。实验中,将种子光源输出激光分为两路（或三路）,分别通过光纤放大器进行功率放大,并采用多抖动法实现相干合成。控制系统开环时,远场光斑条纹模糊不清,两路和三路合成时条纹对比度分别为0.19和0.12;系统闭环时,远场光斑条纹清晰可见,对比度提高到0.93和0.81,合成效率分别为80%和77%。此外,对两路和三路的合成效果进行了比较,指出了各路的控制资源对合成效果的影响。     

Coherent Beam Combination of Two Polarization Maintaining Ytterbium Fibre Amplifiers

We investigate coherent beam combination of fibre laser beams by phase locking. Phase noise of a polarization maintaining ytterbium fibre amplifier is inspected with a fibre interferometer. In a feed back control loop, two fibre polarization maintaining ytterbium amplifiers are phase locked and coherent combined when the phase noise is properly controlled by a LiNO3 phase modulator.     

The 260-W coherent beam combining of two compact fibre amplifier chains

Coherent beam combining of two fibre amplifier chains with a total power of 260 W in a compact system using the stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm is demonstrated. A 150 MHz linewidth fibre laser is built and introduced for high-power amplification to mitigate stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). Compact high-power amplifier chains are built with low power all-fibre system and high-power bulk free-optics fibre amplifiers. When the total power is about 260 W, active phase-locking of two high-power amplifiers is demonstrated using the SPGD algorithm. In closed-loop, the power in the main lobe increases 1.68 times, the visibility is increased from 0 to 0.62, and the phase residual error is less than λ/10.     

Tiled-aperture coherent beam combining of two high-power fibre amplifiers

We demonstrate coherent beam combining of two tiled-aperture single-frequency fibre amplifiers with a total output power of 29.65~W by using the multi-dithering technique. The two laser beams are packaged closely by using free-space mirrors side by side into a tiled-aperture with a near-field fill factor of 62\%. Active phase control of the amplifier is performed on commercially available digital lock-in amplifiers. Experimental results show that the power contained in the main-lobe in closed-loop is 1.72 times greater than that in open-loop, which is 86\% for the ideal case. The fringe contrast of the far-field fringe pattern is as high as 80\% when the system is in closed-loop. The beam quality of the combined beam is computed to be BQ = 1.48. The whole system in closed-loop performs well in a long-time observation.     

2 kW级光纤激光相干偏振合成

基于主动锁相相干偏振合成系统实现了四路500 W级全光纤窄线宽保偏放大器的共孔径合成输出。当相位控制系统处于闭环状态时, 整个合成系统的输出功率达2164 W, 合成效率为94.5%。实验中, 随着功率的提升, 合成效率未发生明显退化。这是目前相干偏振合成系统的最高输出功率。     

Experimental study of SBS suppression and coherence property of 1064 nm high power multi-tone fiber amplifier

Seeding high power fiber amplifier employing multi-tone fiber laser is an effective approach to suppress stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). In this paper, a two-stage 1064 nm high power fiber amplification system was set up. Single-, two- and three-tone fiber lasers were employed. SBS threshold powers and maximum output powers of the multi-tone cases are enhanced compared with the single-tone case. The multi-tone amplifiers also show comparable optical-to-optical efficiency to the single-tone amplifier. To demonstrate and validate coherence property of the two multi-tone fiber amplifiers, the output laser beams of the amplifiers were self-interfered in our self-made coherent beam combining system. The laser beams of the multi-tone cases showed good coherence property comparable to the single-tone case, which implied that the high power output laser light of the multi-tone fiber amplifiers could be used for coherent beam combining.     

Coherent combination of high-power, zigzag slab lasers

We demonstrate a scalable architecture for a high-power, high-brightness, solid-state laser based on coherent combinations of master oscillator power amplifier chains. A common master oscillator injects a sequence of multikilowatt Nd:YAG zigzag slab amplifiers. Adaptive optics correct the wavefront of each amplified beamlet. The beamlets are tiled side by side and actively phase locked to form a single output beam. The laser produces 19 kW with beam quality <2x diffraction limited. To the best of our knowledge, this is the brightest cw solid-state laser demonstrated to date.     

Numerical and experimental study on coherent beam combining of fibre amplifiers using simulated annealing algorithm

We present the numerical and experimental study on the coherent beam combining of fibre amplifiers by means of simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. The feasibility is validated by the Monte Carlo simulation of correcting static phase distortion using SA algorithm. The performance of SA algorithm under time-varying phase noise is numerically studied by dynamic simulation. It is revealed that the influence of phase noise on the performance of SA algorithm gets stronger with an increase in amplitude or frequency of phase noise; and the laser array that contains more lasers will be more affected from phase noise. The performance of SA algorithm for coherent beam combining is also compared with a widely used stochastic optimization algorithm, i.e., the stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm. In a proof-of-concept experiment we demonstrate the coherent beam combining of two 1083~nm fibre amplifiers with a total output power of 12~W and 93% combining efficiency. The contrast of the far-field coherently combined beam profiles is calculated to be as high as 95%.     

激光器阵列的部分相干性对相干合成远场输出特性的影响

对于相干合成的光纤激光器阵列来说,如何定量的分析阵列的相干性对于评价阵列的性能具有极其重要的意义.文章推导了光纤激光器阵列部分相干合成远场强度分布的解析表达式,详细探讨了激光器阵列的部分相干性对相干合成远场图样分布、中心主瓣宽度、斯特列尔比、桶中功率的影响.最后采用主振荡并联放大器方案对三路掺镱光纤放大器进行实时相位探测与校正,实验给出了三路光纤放大器相干合成的结果. 关键词： 光纤激光器阵列 相干合成 相干度     

All-fiber coherent beam combining with phase stabilization via differential pump power control

Coherent beam combining enables power scaling beyond the limits of single amplifiers. Therefore, improving the performance and simplicity of coherent combination techniques is of great interest for many high power applications. Here, we show all-fiber coherent beam combining of two ytterbium doped amplifiers with and without a dedicated phase actuator and a total output power up to 25 W. Instead of a dedicated phase actuator, we directly controlled the two ytterbium amplifiers to also stabilize their relative phase. We compared the performance of this method with phase stabilization using two piezo driven fiber stretchers. In both cases, power noise was dominated by the single amplifier.     

Coherent beam combining of 137 W 2 × 2 fiber amplifier array

We demonstrate coherent beam combining of two-dimensional fiber amplifier arrays with a total of 137 W output power using stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm. Compact all-fiber polarization-maintained single frequency fiber amplifier chains are developed and four fiber amplifiers are arranged to 2 × 2 laser array with a fill factor of 70% in the near-field. Active phase control is implemented by a digital signal processor (DSP) based SPGD controller. The fringe visibility of the coherent combined beam profile is as high as 81% when the system is closed-loop controlled despite perturbations of the environment.     

All-fiber phase actuator based on an erbium-doped fiber amplifier for coherent beam combining at 1064 nm

Active phase control in fiber amplifiers is of considerable interest for low-noise single-frequency amplifiers and for coherent beam combining. We demonstrate phase control at 1064 nm by use of an erbium-doped fiber. We investigated the phase shift by guiding the beam through an erbium-doped fiber amplifier in a Mach-Zehnder configuration and applied the results to stabilize the relative phase of two ytterbium-doped fiber amplifiers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an all-fiber coherent beam combining at 1064 nm employing an erbium-doped fiber as a phase actuator.     

基于随机并行梯度下降算法的多波长激光相干合成

由于受到受激布里渊散射(SBS)等非线性效应的限制,单频激光放大器的功率在百瓦量级,以非单频激光多波长激光作为种子源能够有效地抑制SBS并提高放大器功率.与单频激光相干合成相比,非单频率、多波长激光的相干合成有望将输出激光功率成量级地提高.基于随机并行梯度下降(stochastic parallel gradient descent,SPGD)算法,实现了四波长激光的相干合成.在系统闭环时,四路多波长激光合成后的主瓣能量能够提高3倍,达到理想值的75%.验证了多波长、非单频激光相干合成的可行性,为高功率相干合成的发展提供了新的途径.     

Active coherent beam combination of two high-power single-frequency nanosecond fiber amplifiers

We report on active coherent beam combining of two single-frequency nanosecond fiber amplifiers by using stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm. Each fiber amplifier produces an average power of more than 100 W by using three-stage cascaded amplification. The two laser beams are actively phase-locked with a total average power of 215.8 W, producing ~8 ns pulses at 10 MHz repetition rate. The contrast of the far-field intensity pattern of the coherently combined beam is more than 83%.     

全光纤光反馈环形腔结构多路激光被动相干合成

提出了基于全光纤光反馈环形腔结构的多路光纤激光相干合成方案,实现了多路激光的被动相干合成。全光纤结构避免了传统孔径拼接输出结构的旁斑能量耗散问题,保证了合成光束的光束质量。开展了实验研究,实现了4路光纤激光的相干锁相输出,获得时域、空域特性均十分稳定的合成光束,合成效率为96.1%,取得较好的合成效果。     

LaB6在低压强氮气和氦气中的放电特性

研究了LaB6在1~10 Pa氮气和氦气中的直流和脉冲放电特性以及放电过程对电极的影响。结果表明，电极直径为5 mm的LaB6氦气放电管在脉冲工作状态下可以长期稳定放电。在脉冲电压为2.2 kV、脉冲宽度10 ms、频率13.3 Hz下，脉冲峰值放电电流超过120 A。氦气放电管在放电过程中，阴极表面有离子的清洗和活化作用，可以使电极的表面逸出功降低，提高放电管的发射能力和稳定性。LaB6作为气体放电电极具有寿命长、延迟时间短、放电电流大等优点，可用于重复强流脉冲气体放电的高压高速开关器件。