Coherent Beam Combining of Two Slab Laser Amplifiers and Second-Harmonic Phase Locking Based on a Multi-Dithering Technique

Coherent beam combining (CBC) is an efficient way to scale the brightness of laser arrays. We demonstrate the active phase locking CBC of two slab laser amplifiers based on the multi-dithering technique. The experimental investigation on the 102 W coherent beam combining of two slab amplifiers shows that the whole system in a closed loop performs well over a long time observation. The contrast of the coherent combined beam profile is about 87% and the combining efficiency is nearly 85%. In addition, the CBC of two green lasers is realized based on the second-harmonic generation of the phase locking pump lasers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report about second-harmonic active phase locking, which indicates further potential applications of CBC.