Abstract

High-power fiber lasers have been widely utilized in manufacturing, medical care, and many other fields. Due to mode instability, nonlinear effects, and so on, the output power of a monolithic fiber laser is limited. Coherent beam combining (CBC) of fiber lasers is a promising way to obtain higher output power. An all-fiber CBC structure with internal phase detection has a compact construction and potential for a larger fiber laser array. For the existing internal active phase control of an all-fiber structure, $\pi$ phase ambiguity always occurs because of double passing the fiber path. Additional compensation is needed under this condition, and the compactness of the system will decrease. In this paper, internal phase control of an all-fiber structure based on double wavelength detection without $\pi$-ambiguity is proposed. By adding a beacon laser with a different wavelength, phase locking of a coherent fiber laser array can be achieved internally without $\pi$-ambiguity. A corresponding math model is established, and a phase matched condition is derived. The spectral width of the beacon laser is analyzed, and the result shows that it can reach tens of nanometers with a proper optical path difference. Simulations of seven, 19, and 37 beams are carried out, and the results show that the structure proposed in this paper has the ability to achieve phase control with good robustness. The control bandwidth in the simulation is better than 1 kHz. By properly designing elements, the structure is expected to achieve high-power CBC of an all-fiber structure experimentally.

© 2022 Optica Publishing Group

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