Wavelength beam combining by spectrally selective polarization transformation

摘要

Efficient wavelength beam combining is demonstrated using spectrally selective polarization transformation in carefully designed stacks of birefringent plates combined with polarization-selective beam splitters. This beam-combining scheme is shown to enable a high-throughput power and intensity scaling of blue-diode-laser arrays. The wavelengths of individual diode lasers in the laser array are shifted with respect to each other by a few nanometers, by fine temperature adjustment, for the highest overall output radiance, limited by etendue conservation. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America.