Qi Yun-Feng

High Power Passive Phase Locking of Four Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifiers by an All-Optical Feedback Loop

We report the passive phase locking of four high power Yb-doped fiber amplifiers with ring cavity. The interference patterns at different output power are observed and the Strehl ratios are measured. The maximum coherent output power of the fiber array is up to 1062 W by multi-stage amplification. The stable beam profiles of various phase relationships are observed by controlling the position of the feedback fiber, in good agreement with the calculated results. By using master oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) architecture and broadband operation of passively phased systems, higher power scaling with high beam quality appears to be feasible.

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.

Kilohertz Electro-Optic Q-Switched Nd:YAG Ceramic Laser

We investigate the lasing characteristics of a laser-diode-array side-pumped electro-optic Q-switched Nd:Y3Al5O12 ceramic laser operating at 1000 Hz pulse repetition rate. Using a YAG polycrystalline rod with Nd3+ concentration of 1 at.% as the gain medium, pumping with 808 nm laser-diode-arrays, the Q-switched laser output at 1064 nm wavelength with 23 mJ pulse energy and less than 12 ns FWHM pulse width are obtained at a pumping power of about 400 W, the slope efficiency is around 15%, the output beam divergence angle is about 1.2 mrad.

High power two-stage single frequency PM fiber amplifier

We demonstrate a two-stage single frequency polarization maintaining Yb-doped fiber Amplifier at 1064nm. The gain is 7dB and 17.6dB for the first and the second fiber amplifier. The output power is 17.3W with 62.8% slope efficiency for second fiber amplifier and the polarization extinction ratio is better than 24.3 dB.