Optimal Truncation of Element Beam in a Coherent Fiber Laser Array

The beam quality of a coherent fiber laser array often suffers from the low fill factor of the Gaussian laser array. One simple and effective approach to improve the fill factor is to truncate the array element properly. An analytical expression for far-field intensity distribution of a truncated coherent fiber laser array is derived. Optimal truncation of the element beam in different coherent fiber laser arrays is obtained by using energy encircled in the far-field central-lobe as the beam quality criterion. By optimal truncation, energy encircled in the central-lobe can be 97% compared with the ideal case. The shift in optimal truncation parameter in the case of phase noise is also analyzed.

Beam Quality and Power Scalability of Various Multicore Fiber Lasers

Beam quality and power scalability analyses for various multicore fiber lasers （MFL） are presented. In-phase complex amplitude and corresponding far-field intensity distribution of each type of MFL is calculated using the finite-difference time-domain method. It is revealed that the hexagonal ring-type MFL has the best performance in power handling and maintaining beam quality. Further calculation indicates that power encircled in the diffraction-bucket of L-core MFL scales with no more than 0.4L, which chaJlenges the practical worthiness of fielding MFL with a large number of cores.

Efficient Phase Locking of Fiber Amplifiers Using a Low-Cost and High-Damage-Threshold Phase Control System

We propose a low-cost and high-damage-threshold phase control system that employs a piezoelectric ceramic transducer modulator controlled by a stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm. Efficient phase locking of two fiber amplifiers is demonstrated. Experimental results show that energy encircled in the target pinhole is increased by a factor of 1.76 and the visibility of the fringe pattern is as high as 90% when the system is in close-loop. The phase control system has potential in phase locking of large-number and high-power fiber laser endeavors.

Tolerance on tilt error for coherent combining of fiber lasers

Limited by the precision of optical machining and assembling, the optical axes of lasers in an array cannot be strictly parallel to each other, which will result in the beam quality degradation of the combined beam. The tolerance on tilt error for coherent combining of fiber lasers is studied in detail. The complex amplitude distribution in the far field for the Gaussian beam with tilt angle is obtained by a novel coordinate transform method. Effect of tilt error on coherent combining is modelled analytically. Beam propagation factor is used to evaluate the effect of coherent combining. Numerical results show that for ring-distributed fiber laser array with central wavelength A and geometry size D, if the root-mean-square （RMS） value of the tilt error is smaller than 0.72A/D, the energy encircled in the diffraction-limited bucket can be ensured to be more than 50% of the value when there is no tilt error. The results are helpful to the designing and manufacturing of fiber array for coherent combining.

Influence of turbulent atmosphere on the far-field coherent combined beam quality

Propagation of coherent combined laser beams in turbulent atmosphere is numerically studied based on the extended Huygens-Fresnel principle. By choosing beam propagation factor （BPF） and beam quality factor （BQ） to characterize the far-field irradiance distribution properties, the influence of turbulence on far-field coherent combined beam quality is studied in detail. The investigation reveals that with the coherence length decreasing, the irradiance distribution pattern evolves from typical non-Gaussian shape with multiple side-lobes into Gaussian shape which is seen in the incoherent combining case. In weak turbulent atmosphere, the far-field beam quality suffers less when the laser array gets more compact and operates at a longer wavelength. In strong turbulent atmosphere, the far-field beam quality degrades into the incoherent combining case without any relationship with the fill factor and laser wavelength.

Synchronization and coherent combining of two pulsed fiber lasers

We demonstrate a scalable architecture for coherent combining of pulsed fiber lasers. A new method for generating synchronous pulsed fiber lasers by direct phase modulation is proposed and investigated. It is shown that phase modulated mutually coupled laser array can be a steady synchronous pulsed fiber laser source. The synchronous pulsed fiber lasers are coherently combined with an invariable phase difference of π in adjacent lasers. Neither active phase control nor polarization control is taken in our experiment.

Dependence of stimulated Brillouin scattering in pulsed fiber amplifier on signal linewidth,pulse duration,and repetition rate

The dependencies of stimulated Brillouin scattering （SBS） threshold in pulsed fiber amplifiers on spectral linewidth, pulse duration, and repetition rate are measured and discussed. Experimental results show that the SBS threshold is highly related to spectral linewidth and pulse duration. Therefore, the power handling limitation in a pulsed fiber amplifier may be the average power in some cases and the peak power in others.

Coherent addition of gratings for chirped-pulse-amplified lasers based on near-field and far-field measurements

The development of phased-array grating compressor is a crucial issue for high-energy, ultra-short pulse petawatt-class lasers. Almost all systems have adopted a tiled-grating approach to meet the size requirements for the compression gratings. We present a computer-control test system utilizing near-field interference and far-field focusing capable of monitoring and fast correcting tiled errors of the grating compressor. In this system, the tilt/tip errors between the two gratings are determined by the Fourier transform （FT） of the individual interference fringe, and the piston errors are determined by the ratio of the two primary peaks formed in the far-field pattern as a function of the piston difference. Monochromatic grating phasing is achieved experimentally and pulse compression is demonstrated with a tiled grating system.