Morganville, NJ--Vytran, a supplier of fiber fusion splicing, assembly, and fiber-based glass processing solutions, has coherently combined two, three, and four fiber lasers to produce over 100 W of single-transverse-mode output at around one micron from an all-fiber, all-passive configuration. The results conclude a two-year Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base (Albuquerque, NM).
“We have achieved record power levels of over 100 watts from self-organized beams in two-, three- and four-laser combinations by using large mode area (LMA) 2x2 couplers in all-fiber and all-passive configuration,” said Dr. Baishi Wang, Vytran director of technology. “In addition, we reached 210 watts by combining four lasers using a LMA 7:1 fiber coupler. This work paves the way for further coherent power scaling to kW level and beyond by combining multiple lasers.”
Coherent beam combining (CBC) is a technique that combines multiple laser emitters, in this case fiber lasers, into a single, higher-power, brighter, high-quality beam. Vytran says this latest demonstration not only advances the output power for all-fiber, all-passive laser beam combination, but it also provides scientists with a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of self-organized beam combination, especially the role of fiber nonlinearity.
“This demonstration has significantly advanced coherent combined output power compared with previous fiber laser-based CBC attempts and we attribute the results in part to the precision fused fiber components employed in the system,” said Jean-Michel Pelaprat, Vytran president and CEO. “All of these components were produced with our GPX-3400 glass processor, a unique filament fusion system that is routinely used to manufacture the splices, couplers and combiners critical in high-power fiber lasers.”
Vytran was the primary contractor for the SBIR Phase II grant. Key collaborators also included scientists and engineers at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, CA, and Crystal Fibre (NKT Photonics) in Birkerod, Denmark. “We also thank Anthony Sanchez and his team at AFRL with whom we worked closely on this project,” said Pelaprat.
