Efficient coherent beam combination of two-dimensional phase-locked laser arrays

Abstract

An efficient technique in which a two-dimensional (2D) phase-locked laser array can becoherently combined into a high power and high quality beam by using a conjugateDammann grating (CDG) is presented. A theoretical model is established to provide aphysical interpretation of the proposed scheme. Using this technique, we investigateanalytically and numerically the coherent combination of 2D laser arrays such as5 × 5 and32 × 32 arrangements. Far-field distributions and the near-field pattern of the combined beam arecalculated and compared with experimental results. A verification experiment with a simulated5 × 5 2D laser array using an aperture mask has been performed. Calculations and experimentalresults show that the proposed technique in this paper is an efficient coherent beamcombination method to obtain a high power and high quality beam from laser arrays.