10.8 kW spectral beam combination of eight all-fiber superfluorescent sources and their dispersion compensation

We report an 8-element spectral beam combination of Yb-doped all fiber superfluorescent sources around 1070 nm wavelength. Each source consists of a 60 mW front-end and a 1.5 kW three-stage fiber amplifier chain. The eight output beamlets are spectrally combined using a home-made polarization-independent multilayer dielectric reflective diffraction grating. 10.8 kW output power is achieved with an efficiency of 94%. Besides, both theoretical and experimental studies of dual grating dispersion compensation scheme have been performed, which is proved to be a prospective way for high brightness spectral beam combination. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America