ABSTRACT
Sprangle et al. [Appl. Opt.54, F201 (2015)APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.54.00F201] recently concluded that our experiments on coherent combining of laser beams over an atmospheric path [Opt. Lett.36, 4455 (2011)OPLEDP0146-959210.1364/OL.36.004455] were "effective only because at these low-power levels the linewidth of the lasers was very narrow and the level of atmospheric turbulence was low ." These conclusions are inaccurate, not relevant to practical high-power coherently combined laser systems, and contradict our most recent experiments with coherent combining of 21 laser beams with a linewidth of about 1 GHz over 7 km distance. In this comment we also challenge the major conclusion of Sprangle et al. [Appl. Opt.54, F201 (2015)APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.54.00F201] and the more recently published paper by Nelson et al. [Appl. Opt.55, 1757 (2016)APOPAI0003-693510.1364/AO.55.001757] regarding inefficiency of coherent beam combining under typical atmospheric conditions.
ABSTRACT
The performance of two prominent laser beam projection system types is analyzed through wave-optics numerical simulations for various atmospheric turbulence conditions, propagation distances, and adaptive optics (AO) mitigation techniques. Comparisons are made between different configurations of both a conventional beam director (BD) using a monolithic-optics-based Cassegrain telescope and a fiber-array BD that uses an array of densely packed fiber collimators. The BD systems considered have equal input power and aperture diameters. The projected laser beam power inside the Airy size disk at the target plane is used as the performance metric. For the fiber-array system, both incoherent and coherent beam combining regimes are considered. We also present preliminary results of side-by-side atmospheric beam projection experiments over a 7-km propagation path using both the AO-enhanced beam projection system with a Cassegrain telescope and the coherent fiber-array BD composed of 21 densely packed fiber collimators. Both wave-optics numerical simulation and experimental results demonstrate that, for similar system architectures and turbulence conditions, coherent fiber-array systems are more efficient in mitigation of atmospheric turbulence effects and generation of a hit spot of the smallest possible size on a remotely located target.
ABSTRACT
We demonstrate coherent beam combining and adaptive mitigation of atmospheric turbulence effects over 7 km under strong scintillation conditions using a coherent fiber array laser transmitter operating in a target-in-the-loop setting. The transmitter system is composed of a densely packed array of 21 fiber collimators with integrated capabilities for piston, tip, and tilt control of the outgoing beams wavefront phases. A small cat's-eye retro reflector was used for evaluation of beam combining and turbulence compensation performance at the target plane, and to provide the feedback signal for control of piston and tip/tilt phases of the transmitted beams using the stochastic parallel gradient descent maximization of the power-in-the-bucket metric.
ABSTRACT
Maximization of a projected laser beam's power density at a remotely located extended object (speckle target) can be achieved by using an adaptive optics (AO) technique based on sensing and optimization of the target-return speckle field's statistical characteristics, referred to here as speckle metrics (SM). SM AO was demonstrated in a target-in-the-loop coherent beam combining experiment using a bistatic laser beam projection system composed of a coherent fiber-array transmitter and a power-in-the-bucket receiver. SM sensing utilized a 50 MHz rate dithering of the projected beam that provided a stair-mode approximation of the outgoing combined beam's wavefront tip and tilt with subaperture piston phases. Fiber-integrated phase shifters were used for both the dithering and SM optimization with stochastic parallel gradient descent control.
ABSTRACT
We demonstrate coherent combining (phase locking) of seven laser beams emerging from an adaptive fiber-collimator array over a 7 km atmospheric propagation path using a target-in-the-loop (TIL) setting. Adaptive control of the piston and the tip and tilt wavefront phase at each fiber-collimator subaperture resulted in automatic focusing of the combined beam onto an unresolved retroreflector target (corner cube) with precompensation of quasi-static and atmospheric turbulence-induced phase aberrations. Both phase locking (piston) and tip-tilt control were performed by maximizing the target-return optical power using iterative stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) techniques. The performance of TIL coherent beam combining and atmospheric mitigation was significantly increased by using an SPGD control variation that accounts for the round-trip propagation delay (delayed SPGD).
ABSTRACT
Control methods and system architectures that can be used for locking in phase of multiple laser beams that are generated at the transmitter aperture plane of a coherent fiber-collimator array system (pupil-plane phase locking) are considered. In the proposed and analyzed phase-locking techniques, sensing of the piston phase differences is performed using interference of periphery (tail) sections of the laser beams prior to their clipping by the fiber-collimator transmitter apertures. This obscuration-free sensing technique eliminates the need for a beam splitter being directly located inside the optical train of the transmitted beams--one of the major drawbacks of large-aperture and/or high-power fiber-array systems. Numerical simulation results demonstrate efficiency of the proposed phase-locking methods.
ABSTRACT
Compensation of extended (deep) turbulence effects is one of the most challenging problems in adaptive optics (AO). In the AO approach described, the deep turbulence wave propagation regime was achieved by imaging stars at low elevation angles when image quality improvement with conventional AO was poor. These experiments were conducted at the U.S. Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site (AMOS) by using the 3.63 m telescope located on Haleakala, Maui. To enhance compensation performance we used a cascaded AO system composed of a conventional AO system based on a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror with 941 actuators, and an AO system based on stochastic parallel gradient descent optimization with four deformable mirrors (75 control channels). This first-time field demonstration of a cascaded AO system achieved considerably improved performance of wavefront phase aberration compensation. Image quality was improved in a repeatable way in the presence of stressing atmospheric conditions obtained by using stars at elevation angles as low as 15 degrees.
ABSTRACT
Wavefront control experiments in strong scintillation conditions (scintillation index, approximately equal to 1) over a 2.33 km, near-horizontal, atmospheric propagation path are presented. The adaptive-optics system used comprises a tracking and a fast-beam-steering mirror as well as a 132-actuator, microelectromechanical-system, piston-type deformable mirror with a VLSI controller that implements stochastic parallel gradient descent control optimization of a system performance metric. The experiments demonstrate mitigation of atmospheric distortions with a speckle beacon typical for directed energy and free-space laser communication applications.
ABSTRACT
A 134-control-channel adaptive-optics system consisting of a microelectromechanical mirror array (mu -mirror), a wave-front tilt-control mirror, and a very large scale integration controller utilizing a stochastic gradient-descent optimization of a performance metric is presented. A maximum adaptation rate of ~11, 000 iterations/s was achieved. The system was used to demonstrate real-time compensation for dynamic phase distortions from a laboratory-generated turbulence simulator in a laser-focusing experiment.
