We describe bimorph piezoelectric fiber actuators, which enable tip and tilt control in fiber collimators, as well as their
integration into a fiber-array based beam-projection system. A mechanism for alignment of individual fiber actuators
within the array was developed. It provides six degrees of freedom and allows for high subaperture density. The
alignment procedures for a seven-subaperture prototype system as well as first results from evaluation experiments are
presented.
We demonstrate the coherent combining of three beams with a phase-locking controller using VLSI multi-dithering technique. Three fiber-coupled phase shifters are used to compensate phase distortions in the beam propagation path. The highest dither frequency in our system is ~70MHz. The achieved closed-loop compensation bandwidth of three beamlets is up to 100KHz.
Effective compensation of phase noise in laser communication calls for fast, real-time, adaptive wavefront control. We
present an analog, continuous-time, high-speed VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) controller implementing multi-dithering
perturbative gradient descent optimization of a direct measure of optical performance. The system applies parallel
sinusoidal perturbations to the wavefront over a range of frequencies, and performs parallel synchronous detection of
the metric signal to derive the gradient components over each frequency band. The system operates over a wide range
of frequencies, supporting applications of model-free adaptive optics extending from compensation of slow atmospheric
turbulence to compensation of fast random phase fluctuations in the actuators and laser amplifiers. The system has been
tested as a phase controller for a multiple laser beam wavefront propagating through a highly turbulent medium. The results
indicate a compensation bandwidth exceeding 300 kHz matching the turbulence bandwidth.
In this paper, we present the recent development of a conformal optical system with three adaptive phase-locked fiber elements. The coherent beam combining based on stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm is investigated. We implement both phase-locking control and wavefront phase tip-tilt control in our conformal optical system. The phase-locking control is performed with fiber-coupled lithium niobate phase shifters which are modulated by an AVR micro-processor based SPGD controller. The perturbation rate of this SPGD controller is ~95,000 iterations per second. Phase-locking compensation bandwidth for phase distortion amplitude of 2π-radian phase shift is >100Hz. The tip-tilt control is realized with piezoelectric fiber positioners which are modulated by a computer-based software SPGD controller. The perturbation rate of the tip-tilt SPGD controller is up to ~950 iterations per second. The tip-tilt compensation bandwidth using fiber positioners is ~10Hz at 60-μrad. jitter swing angle.
We present the laboratory experiments of phase locking of a multi-channel tiled fiber array using a stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) feedback controller demonstrating the compensation effect of the simulating phase-induced distortions based on the model-free optimization of the received signal strength. An all-polarization-maintaining (PM)-fiber optical configuration is used to simplify the free-space transceiver system. The atmospheric aberrations are simulated by a multi-channel integrated optical phase modulator which obtains input control voltages from an array of multi-channel independent sinusoidal signal generators. A similar multi-channel phase modulator which obtains input control voltages from a computer-based SPGD controller is used to compensate the simulating phase distortions. The experimental results show that the constructive interference state is reached through phase locking of the multi-channel tiled fiber array for phase distortions up to 180 hertz for each channel. The update rate of the computer-based SPGD controller is ~16,000 iterations per second. The average compensation bandwidth is about 310 Hz
We discuss the expansion of wavefront distortion compensation based on stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) optimization to the control of several wavefront correctors. We describe then a SPGD adaptive optics system that uses a low-order deformable mirror with modal control and a high-resolution (either 132 or 320 control channels) piston-type MEMS mirror. The system was installed at a 2.3km near-horizontal propagation and used for atmospheric compensation experiments. Results obtained for different system configurations are presented.
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