Coherent addition of adjacent lasers by forked eigenstate operation

摘要

Forked laser eigenstates are shown to provide a powerful tool both to phase lock spatially separated laser oscillators and to add their powers coherently into a TEM↓(oo) output beam. Coherent addition of the powers extracted from two fiber-coupled diode-pumped Nd:YAG channels is theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. Pure TEM↓(oo) oscillation is obtained with a 20% optical-to-optical conversion efficiency. The coherence of the two-propagation-axis laser is proved, and single-frequency operation is demonstrated. The scalability of the scheme is discussed. # 1998 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 140.0140, 140.3290, 140.3410, 140.3480, 260.5430.