Four-Beam Tiled-Aperture Coherent Beam Combining of High-Power Femtosecond Laser With Two Compressors

Chun Peng,Ruxin Li,Xiaoyan Liang,Xunzheng Li

doi:10.1109/jphot.2021.3132362

Abstract

The former reports of coherent beam combining (CBC) in the ultra-intense ultra-short laser field focus on the phase control technology and two-beam CBC. To study the four-beam tiled-aperture CBC in the ultra-intense and ultra-short laser field, we demonstrate four-beam CBC of femtosecond laser pulses based on chirped pulse amplification (CPA) scheme. In this experiment, the four beams were compressed using two grating compressors to simulate the situation in ultra-intense and ultra-short laser CBC systems. To achieve real-time measurement of the phase error between the four beams, we introduced a continuous reference laser and the phases of beams 2, 3, and 4 were locked to beam 1.A combined efficiency of 57% was achieved. Although the coherent combining efficiency is not very high, the possibility of a four-beam CBC based on the CPA scheme was confirmed, especially with different grating compressors which can reduce the limitation of gratings in single beam petawatt lasers. Finally, the remaining difficulties in the implementation of CBC of four beams and the methods to improve its efficiency were analyzed. The use of CBC in ultra-intense and ultrashort laser systems is of considerable significance.

Highlights

H IGH-power laser devices based on chirped pulse amplification (CPA) and optical parametric chirp pulse amplification (OPCPA) techniques can create an ultra-intense laser field
In this study, we experimentally demonstrated a coherent beam combining (CBC) system of four beams based on the CPA scheme
To achieve real-time measurement of the phase error between the four beams, we introduced a continuous reference laser

Summary

Introduction

H IGH-power laser devices based on chirped pulse amplification (CPA) and optical parametric chirp pulse amplification (OPCPA) techniques can create an ultra-intense laser field These devices have significantly advanced the development of high-intensity field laser physics, such as astrophysics in the laboratory [1], fast ignition [2], and laserplasma electron and ion acceleration [3]. To create ultra-high peak power lasers, new techniques have been developed [7,12,13,14,15,16], among these methods, tiled-aperture CBC have been considered to be a most promising way to overcome the limitation of the size of gratings [12,13,14]

Methods

Results

Conclusion