Coherent beam combining of seven fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers using an interferometric phase measurement.

ABSTRACT

Coherent beam combining in tiled-aperture configuration is demonstrated on seven femtosecond fiber amplifiers using an interferometric phase measurement technique. The residual phase error between two fibers is as low as λ/55 RMS and a combination efficiency of 48% has been achieved. The combined pulses are compressed to 216 fs, delivering 71 W average power at a repetition rate of 55 MHz. Operating the laser system in a nonlinear regime with an estimated B-integral of 5 rad yields a combining efficiency of 45% with the same phase stability. These results pave the way to very large high-power and high energy coherent beam combining systems.