Coherent beam combining of two fiber amplifiers using stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm

We demonstrate the coherent beam combining of fiber amplifiers using a stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm, producing a total output power of 23W. Active phase control on each amplifier is performed by running the SPGD algorithm on a DSP chip with updating rate of almost 100 kHz. Experimental results show that power encircled in the target pinhole in closed-loop mode is 1.85 times more than that in open-loop mode, which is 92% of the ideal case. The fringe contrast of the far-field fringe pattern is as high as 92% when the system is in closed-loop mode. The whole system in closed-loop mode performs well in a long-time observation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.