Beam propagation constants for a radial laser array

摘要

The beam quality of a radial laser array, quantified in terms of the M-2 propagation constant, is determined as a function of array element configuration. A lower bound on array M-2 is estimated for both phase-locked and nonphase-locked conditions. It is shown that, to achieve near-unity M-2 array, either aperture filling or spatial filtering is required in addition to phase locking. An aperture-filling method suitable for radial arrays of CO2 slab lasers is presented. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America. [References: 14]