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.     

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%.     

基于偏振自适应和主动相位控制的相干合成的实验研究

进行了非保偏放大器与保偏放大器的相干合成的实验研究。通过随机并行梯度下降（SPGD）算法对非保偏放大器进行偏振自适应控制,使非保偏放大器输出激光的消光比达到11.5 dB,与保偏放大器在同一偏振方向上的光功率占总功率的93.4%。利用单抖动法进行非保偏放大器与保偏放大器的主动相位控制,实现相干合成。实验结果表明:SPGD算法能够有效实现偏振自适应控制,偏振自适应控制前后相干合成远场的条纹对比度从80.1%提高到87.2%,相干合成的效果提升明显;通过增加参与合成的放大器路数,并在各路激光中引入多级功率放大器,能够得到更高的合成功率输出。     

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.     

两种方法实现对掺镱光纤放大器的相位校正

 在光纤激光器阵列的相干合成技术中,主振荡并联放大器（MOPA）方案最关键的技术是对光纤放大器进行相位控制与校正。本文用两种方法分别对掺镱光纤放大器进行了相位控制与校正。一种是爬山法,通过自动寻优的方式不断改变相位调制器控制电压,使系统输出保持在干涉最强处;另一种是外差法,通过实时探测和校正光路中相位的变化,确保输出光束的相位一致。实验系统中主振荡激光器的波长为1 083 nm,输出功率0~100 mW连续可调。光纤相位调制器是铌酸锂相位调制器。光纤放大器输出功率0~1 W连续可调,整个光路为全保偏光路。爬山法系统的工作频率为100 kHz,控制精度为λ/10;外差法系统的移频量为40 MHz,精度优于λ/20。在两类闭环控制过程中,铌酸锂相位控制器都很好地实现了光纤放大器的相位校正。该工作为实现光纤激光器阵列的相干合成打下实验基础。     

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     

光纤放大器阵列的远场特性研究

从光纤激光器阵列相干合成远场光强分布的解析表达式出发，详细研究了阵列占空比、阵元个数以及阵元的相位误差对相干合成远场图样分布、中心主瓣的角宽度及所占能量的影响. 给出了占空比为12.5%时，三路保偏光纤放大器相干合成的实验结果. 关键词： 光纤激光器阵列 相干合成 相位     

Coherent beam combination of narrow-linewidth 1.5 μm fiber amplifiers in a long-pulse regime

We report what we believe to be the first experimental demonstration of coherent beam combining of two fiber amplifiers in a 100 ns pulse regime using a signal leak between the pulses. Pulses of ～100 W stimulated-Brillouin-scattering limited peak power are combined with 95% efficiency, a residual phase error of λ/27, and no significant beam quality degradation.     

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.     

Passive coherent combination of two ultrafast rod type fiber chirped pulse amplifiers

Using passive coherent beam combining of two ultrafast fiber amplifiers, we demonstrate the generation of high temporal quality 300 fs and 650 μJ pulses corresponding to 60 W of average power at a repetition rate of 92 kHz. Furthermore, at 2 MHz of repetition rate record coherent combining average powers of 135 W before and 105 W after compression are measured. A combining efficiency higher than 90% is maintained over the whole range of output powers and repetition rates investigated demonstrating the efficiency and robustness of the passive combining technique. The measured pulse-to-pulse relative power fluctuation at high energy is 2%, indicating that the system is essentially immune to environmental phase noise. We believe the passive combining method to be an attractive approach for compact multi-GW peak power femtosecond fiber-based sources.     

88 W 0.5 mJ femtosecond laser pulses from two coherently combined fiber amplifiers

The generation of 0.5 mJ femtosecond laser pulses by coherent combining of two high power high energy fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers is reported. The system is running at a repetition frequency of 175 kHz producing 88 W of average power after the compressor unit. Polarizing beam splitters have been used to realize an amplifying Mach-Zehnder interferometer, which has been stabilized with a H?nsch-Couillaud measurement system. The stabilized system possesses a measured residual rms phase difference fluctuation between the two branches as low as λ/70 rad at the maximum power level. The experiment proves that coherent addition of femtosecond fiber lasers can be efficiently and reliably performed at high B-integral and considerable thermal load in the individual amplifiers.     

Coherent beam combining of hybrid phase control in master oscillator-power amplifier configuration

A novel scalable architecture for coherent beam combining with hybrid phase control involving passive phasing and active phasing in master oscillator-power amplifier configuration is presented. Wide-linewidth mutually injected passive phasing fibre laser arrays serve as master oscillators for the power amplifiers, and the active phasing using stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm is induced. Wide-linewidth seed laser can suppress the stimulated Brillouin scattering effectively and improve the output power of the fibre laser amplifier, while hybrid phase control provides a robust way for in-phase mode coherent beam combining simultaneously. Experiment is performed by active phasing fibre laser amplifiers with passive phasing fibre ring laser array seed lasers. Power encircled in the main-lobe increases1.57 times and long-exposure fringe contrast is obtained to be 78% when the system evolves from passive phasing to hybrid phasing.     

Coherent beam combining of two femtosecond fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers

We demonstrate coherent beam combining of two femtosecond fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers seeded by a common oscillator. Using a feedback loop based on an electro-optic phase modulator, an average power of 7.2?W before compression is obtained with a combining efficiency of 90%. The spatial and temporal qualities of the oscillator are retained, with a recombined pulse width of 325?fs. This experiment opens up a way to scale the peak/average power of ultrafast fiber sources.     

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.     

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。     

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 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.     

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.     

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.     

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。