Spectral beam combining of high-power fiber lasers

Anping Liu; Roy Mead; Tracy Vatter; Angus Henderson; Ryan Stafford

doi:10.1117/12.529598

7 June 2004 Spectral beam combining of high-power fiber lasers

Anping Liu, Roy Mead, Tracy Vatter, Angus Henderson, Ryan Stafford

Proceedings Volume 5335, Fiber Lasers: Technology, Systems, and Applications; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.529598
Event: Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering, 2004, San Jose, Ca, United States

Abstract

We have demonstrated spectral beam combining of two high power fiber lasers and obtained more than 40 W output power from the system. The system consists of two 30 W fiber lasers, a diffraction grating and a resonator. Both fiber lasers have broadband fiber Bragg gratings on the rear sides and share the diffraction grating and output coupler on the output sides. The wavelengths of the fiber lasers are determined by the optical dispersion provided by the grating and the collimating lens, as well as the fiber spacing. A model that analyzes dependence of laser line-width on beam quality of an SBC system is given in this paper. We also model a novel configuration that can significantly improve beam quality. The experimental results have shown that control of fiber laser line-width is the key to achieving high power SBC lasers. In addition, a new approach using three gratings is proposed and has been proven by the experiment. The new approach consists of three gratings, in which one grating is used by the SBC cavity to lock wavelengths while the other two combine the collimated beams without beam quality reduction. This approach has successfully improved beam quality M² from 11 to 2.0.

Citation Download Citation

Anping Liu, Roy Mead, Tracy Vatter, Angus Henderson, and Ryan Stafford "Spectral beam combining of high-power fiber lasers", Proc. SPIE 5335, Fiber Lasers: Technology, Systems, and Applications, (7 June 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.529598

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