학술논문

Coherent beam combining of two all-PM thulium-doped fiber chirped pulse amplifiers
Document Type
article
Source
Frontiers of Optoelectronics, Vol 17, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2024)
Subject
Coherent beam combining
Thulium-doped fiber laser
High-average power
Chirped pulse amplifier
Applied optics. Photonics
TA1501-1820
Language
English
ISSN
2095-2767
Abstract
Abstract In this paper, we report a coherent beam combining (CBC) system that involves two thulium-doped all-polarization maintaining (PM) fiber chirped pulse amplifiers. Through phase-locking the two channels via a fiber stretcher by using the stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm, a maximum average power of 265 W is obtained, with a CBC efficiency of 81% and a residual phase error of λ/17. After de-chirping by a pair of diffraction gratings, the duration of the combined laser pulse is compressed to 690 fs. Taking into account the compression efficiency of 90% and the main peak energy proportion of 91%, the corresponding peak power is calculated to be 4 MW. The laser noise characteristics before and after CBC are examined, and the results indicate that the CBC would degrade the low frequency relative intensity noise (RIN), of which the integration is 1.74% in [100 Hz, 2 MHz] at the maximum combined output power. In addition, the effects of the nonlinear spectrum broadening during chirped pulse amplification on the CBC efficiency are also investigated, showing that a higher extent of pulse stretching is effective in alleviating the spectrum broadening and realizing a higher output power with decent combining efficiency. Graphical Abstract