The Improved Power of the Central Lobe in the Beam Combination and High Power Output

In order to increase the power fraction of the central lobe in the coherent beam combination of lasers in an array, the effects of the distance factor of near-field distribution on far-field interference patterns are calculated and demonstrated experimentally. An improved beam array of interwoven distribution is demonstrated to enable the power in the central lobe to reach 41%. An optimized mirror array is carefully designed to obtain a high duty ratio, which is up to 53.3% at a high power level. By using these optimized methods and designs, the passive phase locking of eight Yb-doped fiber amplifiers with ring cavities are obtained, and a pleasing interference pattern with 87% visibility is observed. The maximum coherent output power of the system is up to 1066 W.