Ultimate efficiency of spectral beam combining by volume Bragg gratings

L.B. Glebov (1) , Derrek R. Drachenberg (2) , Oleksiy Andrusyak (2) , George Venus (2) , Vadim Smirnov (3) , Julien Lumeau (4) , Leonid B. Glebov (1)

1 CREOL - The College of Optics and Photonics [Orlando]
2 CREOL - Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers
3 OptiGrate
4 RCMO - RCMO

Spectral beam combining (SBC) by volume Bragg gratings (VBGs) recorded in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass is a powerful tool for laser applications that require higher radiance than a single laser unit can achieve. The beam-combining factor (BCF) is introduced as a tool to compare various beam-combining methods and experiments. It describes the change of radiance provided by a beam-combining system but is not affected by the initial beam quality of the combined lasers. A method of optimization of VBGs providing the maximum efficiency of SBC has been described for an arbitrary number of beams. An experiment confirming the proposed modeling for a two-beam SBC system by a single VBG has demonstrated a total combined power of 301 W with a channel separation of 0.25 nm, combining efficiency of 97%, close to diffraction limited divergence with M2=1.18, BCF of 0.77, and spectral radiance of 770 TW/(sr⋅m2⋅nm), the highest to date for SBC.

Domaines: Optique / photonique

L.B. Glebov, Derrek R. Drachenberg, Oleksiy Andrusyak, George Venus, Vadim Smirnov, et al.. Ultimate efficiency of spectral beam combining by volume Bragg gratings. Applied optics, 2013, 52 (30), pp.7233-7242. ⟨hal-00945858⟩