Abstract

The status of our coherently combined 7-element, high power fiber array will be presented. A description of the architecture, the method of phase correction and a presentation of the results obtained to date will be presented. Details of our recent demonstration of a 155 W, polarization-maintaining fiber amplifier will be presented. This effort represents the results of a multi-year effort to achieve high power for a single element fiber amplifier and to understand the important issues involved in coherently combining many individual elements to obtain weapons class optical power for directed energy weapons. We will also discuss our vision on the next steps for this technology.

© 2004 Optical Society of America