COHERENTLY PHASE COMBINED, HIGH CONTRAST, PULSED OPTICAL FIBER AMPLIFIER ARRAY

摘要

A pulsed fiber array laser system that has actively stabilized coherent beam combination (CBC) is disclosed. The active stabilization is accomplished using both piston phase control and intra-pulse phase control, allowing a much greater increase in pulse energy. Further stabilization using intra-pulse amplitude control is also disclosed. A chirp profile can be written on the output pulse to enable specific applications. An amplitude profile of the amplifier array may optionally be tailored to match to a reference electrical pulse. Using the current invention, a much smaller number of amplifier chains will be needed to achieve certain pulse energy, resulting in a system with lower complexity, lower cost, smaller size, less weight, and higher reliability. A frequency shifted (52) part of the input pulse is phase controlled (54) and used for heterodyne detection (56) together with part of the in the fiber amplifer (24) amplified leaking light between the pulses. The phase in each of the parallel amplification lines (24) is controlled with a phase controller (20) using high-speed electronics.