In order to increase the power fraction of the central lobe in the coherent beam combination of lasers in an array,the effects of the distance factor of near-field distribution on far-field interference patterns are calculated and demonstrated experimentally.An improved beam array of interwoven distribution is demonstrated to enable the power in the central lobe to reach 41%.An optimized mirror array is carefully designed to obtain a high duty ratio,which is up to 53.3% at a high power level.By using these optimized methods and designs,the passive phase locking of eight Yb-doped fiber amplifiers with ring cavities are obtained,and a pleasing interference pattern with 87% visibility is observed.The maximum coherent output power of the system is up to 1066 W.
We report a 1 018-nm ytterbium-doped double-clad fiber laser pumped by 970-nm diode. A pair of fiber Bragg gratings with reflectivities of 99.9% and 9% at a center wavelength of 1 018.9 nm are employed as cavity mirrors. The ytterbium-doped double-clad fiber is a 2.6-m-long Liekki fiber. Laser output power of 7.5 W at 1 018 nm is obtained under the pump power of 59.2 W. The overall slope efficiency of the fiber laser is about 16%. This low slope efficiency is mainly due to the incomplete absorption of the pump power.
Array size scaling of passive coherent beam combination is explored theoretically. The Strehl ratio variation with wavelength is simulated in 4-, 9-, 16-, and 25-channel fiber arrays. The average Strehl ratio and phase error are calculated. The Strehl ratio is found to be near 100% for arrays with less than 5 fibers, but decreases significantly for larger arrays. These results are in good agreement with the recent experimental results.
The maximum output power of fiber lasers limited by the thermal degradation of double-clad fiber coatings is theoretically simulated.We investigated the thermal effects on high-power continuous wave (CW) fiber lasers with a focus on heating at the splice joints as well as on the doped fiber caused by quantum defects.Whether thermal interface materials are used or not,the thermal contact resistances between the fiber and its heat sink are measured separately while using different cooling equipments.Though the thermal management of splices is more difficult than that of active fibers,a temperature increase of 0.019 K/W is obtained for a splice joint into which the pump light launches.The splice joint sustains 3 kW of total passing power.
