Indirectly coherent beam combining of pulsed lasers based on active control of continuous carrier

High-power and high-quality pulsed fiber lasers with low repetition frequency are widely applied to various fields ranging from basic science to industrial applications. Coherent beam combining (CBC) is a significant method to obtain that beam, but few methods used for large-scale CBC of pulsed fiber lasers with low repetition frequency were presented. To realize it, a new method based on a continuous carrier was designed, where the continuous wave worked as the beacon signal, and the stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm was employed for phase locking and tilt correction. The beam combining experiment revealed that the combining efficiency of two lasers with a repetition frequency of 15 kHz and a pulse width of 100 ns was 95%, and the fringe contrast in the center of the far-field spot was improved about three times. This method promises to be furtherly applied to combine the pulsed lasers with lower repetition frequency and narrower pulse width. These results pave the way for large-scale CBC of high-power and high-quality pulsed fiber lasers. (C) 2021 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Automated summary

A new method based on continuous carrier was proposed for beam combining of pulsed fiber lasers with low repetition frequency, which significantly improved the combining efficiency. This research has the potential to be further applied to combine pulsed lasers with lower repetition frequency, paving the way for large-scale coherent beam combining of high-power and high-quality pulsed fiber lasers.