Using harmonic beam combining to generate pulse-burst in nonlinear optical laser

The ultrashort lasers working in pulse-burst mode reveal great machining performance in recent years. The number of pulses in bursts effects greatly on the removal rate and roughness. To generate a more equal amplitude of pulses in burst with linear polarization output and time gap adjustable, we propose a new method by the harmonic beam combining(HBC).The beam combining is commonly used in adding pulses into the output beam while maintaining the pulse waveform and beam quality. In the HBC, dichroic mirrors are used to combine laser pulses of fundamental wave(FW) into harmonic wave(HW), and nonlinear crystals are used to convert the FW into HW. Therefore, HBC can add arbitrarily more HW pulses to generate pulse-burst in linear polarization with simple structure. The amplitude of each pulse in bursts can be adjusted the same to increase the stability of the burst, the time gap of each pulse can be adjusted precisely by proper time delay. Because HBC adds pulses sequentially, the peak power density of the burst is the same as each pulse, pulses can be combined without concern of back-conversion which often occurs in high peak power density. In the demonstration, the extendibility of HBC was verified by combining two beams with a third beam. The combined efficiency rates were larger than 99%, and the beam quality of each beam was maintained at M^(2)≈1.4.

Terahertz shaping technology based on coherent beam combining

The generation of terahertz(THz) waves by focusing a femtosecond pulsed laser beam at a distance is able to overcome the strong absorption properties of air and has rapidly attracted the attention of industry. However, the poor directionality of the THz wave radiation generated by this method is not conducive to THz wave applications. By controlling the morphology of the ultrafast laser-excited plasma filament and its electron density distribution through coherent beam combining technology, we achieve direct THz beam shaping and are able to obtain THz wave radiation of Gaussian or arbitrary transverse distribution. The novel experimental approach proposed in this paper opens up the research field of direct THz wave shaping using plasma. Moreover, it innovates multi-parameter convergence algorithms and, by doing so, has the potential to find beam patterns with higher energy conversion efficiency and break the energy limit of THz waves emitted by lasers at high power.

Spectral Beam Combining of Fiber Lasers by Using Reflecting Volume Bragg Gratings

By employing three reflecting volume Bragg gratings, a near-infrared 4-channel spectral-beam-combining system is demonstrated to present 720 W combined power with a combining efficiency of 94.7%. The combined laser beam is near-diffraction-limited with a beam factor M^2-1.54. During this 4-channel beam-combining process, no special active cooling measures are used to evaluate the volume Bragg gratings as combining elements are under the higher power laser operation. Thermal expansion and period distortion are verified in a 2 k W 2-channel beam-combining process, and the heat issue in the transmission case is found to be more remarkable than that in the diffraction e-se. Transmitted and diffracted beams experience wave-front aberrations with different degrees, thus leading to distinct beam deterioration.

Impact of atmospheric turbulence on coherent beam combining for laser weapon systems

The performance of a laser weapon system based on coherent beam combining(CBC)depends on its propagation properties in the atmosphere.In this study,an analytical model based on partial coherent beam combining(PCBC)for assumed coherence coefficients between beams in a CBC lattice was developed.The Kolmogorov model of atmospheric turbulence and the Hufnagel-Valley model of C^(2)_(n) dependence on atmospheric parameters were implemented.Novel simplified metrics were proposed to assess the CBC performance.Several beam profiles(super-Gaussian,truncated Gaussian,etc.)and geometries were analyzed in terms of maximal intensity in the far field.An approximate formula for PCBC efficiency dependent on the Fried radius was proposed.The results of CBC modeling were compared to those of the Gaussian beam propagation model in a turbulent atmosphere.The dependence of CBC performance on the C^(2)_(n) parameter,range,and elevation angle was analyzed.It could be concluded that the application of CBC for medium and long range propagation is impractical without an effective adaptive optics system.

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 he BQ = 1.48. The whole system in closed-loop performs well in a long-time observation.

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.

Coherent beam combination of adaptive fiber laser array with tilt-tip and phase-locking control

We present an experimental study on tilt-tip（TT） and phase-locking（PL） control in a coherent beam combination（CBC） system of adaptive fiber laser array.The TT control is performed using the adaptive fiber-optics collimator（AFOC）,and the PL control is realized by the phase modulator（PM）.Cascaded and simultaneous controls of TT and PL using stochastic parallel gradient descent（SPGD） algorithm are investigated in this paper.Two-fiber-laser-,four-fiber-laser-,and six-fiber-laser-arrays are employed to study the TT and PL control.In the cascaded control system,only one high-speed CMOS camera is used to collect beam data and a computer is used as the controller.In a simultaneous control system one high-speed CMOS camera and one photonic detector（PD） are employed,and a computer and a control circuit based on field programmable gate array（FPGA） are used as the controllers.Experimental results reveal that both cascaded and simultaneous controls of TT using AFOC and PL using PM in fiber laser array are feasible and effective.Cascaded control is more effective in static control situation and simultaneous control can be applied to the dynamic control system directly.The control signals of simultaneous PL and TT disturb each other obviously and TT and PL control may compete with each other,so the control effect is limited.

Propagation properties of off-axis Hermite-cosh-Gaussian beam combinations through a first-order optical system

Based on the Collins integral formula, the analytic expressions of propagation of the coherent and the incoherent off-axis Hermite-cosh-Gaussian （HChG） beam combinations with rectangular symmetry passing through a paraxial first-order optical system are derived, and corresponding numerical examples are given and analysed. The resulting beam quality is discussed in terms of power in the bucket （PIB）. The study suggests that the resulting beam cannot keep the initial intensity shape during the propagation and the beam quality for coherent mode is not always better than that for incoherent mode. Reviewing the numerical simulations of Gaussian, Hermite-Gaussian （HG） and cosh- Gaussian （ChG） beam combinations indicates that the Hermite polynomial exerts a chief influence on the irradiance profile of composite beam and far field power concentration.

Comparative study on the power scaling performance of three different coherent polarization beam combination system structures

Coherent polarization beam combination （CPBC） is a new kind of coherent beam combination configuration with high combining efficiency and excellent beam quality. In order to extend the CPBC system to a large scale, we provide a comparative study on the power scaling performance of three different coherent polarization beam combination system structures. It is found that the pairwise structure has high tolerance to aberrations and has the potential to extend to a large scale with high combining efficiency. In consideration of all the aberrations, the combining efficiency of the pairwise structure can be attained as high as 90% when the combined beams are more than 200. Some instructive suggestions are given to extend the CPBC system to a large scale.

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.

Fully Immersing Water-Cooled Radial Slab Laser and its Incoherent Beam Combination

A novel scheme of fully immersing water cooling is proposed for a Nd：glass radial slab laser. The slab medium is entirely immersed in the circulating water Ailing the pumping cavity, which enables much lower temperature and reasonably smaller thermal gradient in the slab medium. The radial slab is symmetrically and synchronously pumped by eight flash lamps, and produces multi-output beams with a total energy of 469md. Incoherent beam combination property of the multi-output beams is also investigated. The approach suggested here provides a way of scaling the slab lasers to much higher output levels and also a convenience for beam combinations.

Incoherent and coherent beam combination for master oscillator/power amplifier system with stimulated Brillouin scattering mirror

In this paper, we studied incoherent and coherent beam combining for the master oscillator/power amplifier （MOPA） system with stimulated Brillouin scattering （SBS） mirror. Optic field intensity distributions in the near and far field are numerically calculated for the two kinds of system. The results show that good beam quality in the far field could be obtained. It provides a theoretical basis for experimental research in the future.

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%.

260 fs,403 W coherently combined fiber laser with precise high‑order dispersion management

An ultrafast fiber laser system comprising two coherently combined amplifier channels is reported.Within this system,each channel incorporates a rod-type fiber power amplifier,with individual operations reaching approximately 233 W.The active-locking of these coherently combined channels,followed by compression using gratings,yields an output with a pulse energy of 504μJ and an average power of 403 W.Exceptional stability is maintained,with a 0.3%root mean square(RMS)deviation and a beam quality factor M^(2)<1.2.Notably,precise dispersion management of the front-end seed light effectively compensates for the accumulated high-order dispersion in subsequent amplification stages.This strategic approach results in a significant reduction in the final output pulse duration for the coherently combined laser beam,reducing it from 488 to 260 fs after the gratings compressor,while concurrently enhancing the energy of the primary peak from 65%to 92%.

High-power mode-programmable orbital angular momentum beam emitter with an internally sensed optical phased array

The high-power mode-programmable orbital angular momentum(OAM)beam has attracted significant attention in a wide range of applications,such as long-distance optical communication,nonlinear frequency conversion,and beam shaping.Coherent beam combining(CBC)of an optical phased array(OPA)can offer a promising solution for both generating the high-power OAM beam and rapidly switching the OAM modes.However,achieving real-time phase noise locking and formation of desired phase structures in a high-power CBC system faces significant challenges.Here,an internal phase-sensing technique was utilized to generate the high-power OAM beam,which effectively mitigated thermal effects and eliminated the need for large optical devices.An OPA with six elements was employed for experimental demonstration.The first effective generation of over 1.5 kW mode-programmable OAM beam in a continuous-wave domain was presented.Moreover,the results demonstrated that the generated OAM beam could be modulated with multiple dimensions.The topological charge can be switched in real time from-1 to-2.Notably,this OAM beam emitter could function as an OAM beam copier by easily transforming a single OAM beam into an OAM beam array.More importantly,a comprehensive analysis was conducted on power scaling,mode switching speed,and expansion of OAM modes.Additionally,the system’s compact design enabled it to function as a packageable OAM beam emitter.Owing to the advantages of having high power and programmable modes with multiple dimension modulation in phase structures and intensity distribution,this work can pave the way for producing high-power structured light beams and advancing their applications.

Variable spot size optical system for a dual-wavelength laser therapy device

The majority of existing high-power laser therapeutic instruments employ a single wavelength for a single target;thus,they do not meet the requirements for clinical treatment.Therefore,this study designs an optical system for a dual-wavelength high-power laser therapeutic device with a variable spot size.The waist of the short arm of the optical cavity and the G1G2 parameter(G-parameter equivalent cavity method)is calculated using MATLAB software,the spot size and divergence angle on the lens are calculated using an ABCD matrix,and the distance between the treatment spot at different spot sizes and the transformation lens is calculated in order to design the treatment handpiece.Experiments are conducted to analyze the stability at an output power of 532 nm before beam combination and the power loss after beam combination.The results show that the output power stability of the 532-nm beam varies by less than 2%over 150 min,and the loss of both wavelengths is less than 20%,which meets the clinical requirements of the system.The safety performance can meet the requirements of national general standards for medical electrical safety.The proposed dual-wavelength laser therapy instrument has both visible wave and near-infrared wave characteristics;thus,it can accurately target both superficial vessels and vessels with a larger diameter and deeper position.This therapeutic device has the advantages of simple operation,stable and reliable laser output,high security and strong anti-interference ability,and meets the comprehensive clinical treat-ment demands of vascular diseases.

Influence of optical nonlinearity on combining efficiency in ultrashort pulse fiber laser coherent combining system

The influence of optical nonlinearity on combining efficiency in ultrashort pulse fiber laser coherent combining system is investigated theoretically and experimentally.In the theoretical work,a new theoretical algorithm is presented for the coherent combining efficiency,which can be used to quantify the spectral coherence decay induced by optical nonlinearity imbalance between the sub-beams.The spectral information of the sub-beam is obtained by numerically solving the nonlinear Schrödinger equation(NLSE)in this algorithm to ensure an accurate prediction.In the experimental work,the coherent combining of two all-fiber picosecond lasers is achieved,and the influence of imbalanced optical nonlinearity on the combining efficiency is studied,which agrees with the theoretical prediction.This paper reveals the physical mechanism for the influence of optical nonlinearity on the combining efficiency,which is valuable for the coherent combining of ultrashort pulse fiber laser beams.

Multi-wavelength laser active coherent combination

A seed laser oscillating at different frequencies is proved to have the potential to mitigate the stimulated Brillouin scattering（SBS） effect in a fiber amplifier,which may increase the emission power of a coherent beam combination（CBC） system greatly.In this study,a basic mathematical model describing the multi-wavelength CBC is proposed on the fundamentals of CBC.A useful method for estimating the combination effect and analysing the feasibility and the validity of the multi-wavelength coherent combination is provided.In the numerical analysis,accordant results with four-wavelength four-channel CBC experiments are obtained.Through calculations of some examples with certain spectra,the unanticipated excellent combination effect with a few frequencies involved is explained,and the dependence of the combination effect on the variance of the amplifier chain length and the channel number is clarified.

Deep-learning-based phase control method for tiled aperture coherent beam combining systems

We incorporate deep learning(DL)into tiled aperture coherent beam combining(CBC)systems for the first time,to the best of our knowledge.By using a well-trained convolutional neural network DL model,which has been constructed at a non-focal-plane to avoid the data collision problem,the relative phase of each beamlet could be accurately estimated,and then the phase error in the CBC system could be compensated directly by a servo phase control system.The feasibility and extensibility of the phase control method have been demonstrated by simulating the coherent combining of different hexagonal arrays.This DL-based phase control method offers a new way of eliminating dynamic phase noise in tiled aperture CBC systems,and it could provide a valuable reference on alleviating the long-standing problem that the phase control bandwidth decreases as the number of array elements increases.

Coherent beam combination far-field measuring method based on amplitude modulation and deep learning

A deep convolutional neural network is employed to simultaneously measure the beam-pointing and phase difference of sub-beams from a single far-field interference fringe for coherent beam combining systems.The amplitudes of sub-beams in the measurement path are modulated in order to prevent measuring mistakes caused by the symmetry of beam-pointing.This method is able to measure beam-pointing and phase difference with an RMS accuracy of about 0.2μrad andλ/250,respectively,in a two-beam coherent beam combining system.