BEAM-STACKING ELEMENT FOR DIODE-LASER BAR STACK

摘要

Optical apparatus (40) includes a diode-laser bar stack (42) having N fast-axis stacked diode-laser bars (17) cooperative with a parallel sided transparent stacking plate (50). The stacking plate receives N original beams (44) from the N diode-laser bars and converts the N beams to 2N fast-axis stacked beams (44A, 44B) having one-half of a width the original beams and one-half of a fast-axis spacing between the original beams. The transparent plate has parallel surfaces (50A,50B) with the surfaces being tilted in both perpendicular directions versus the incoming laser beams (44). The second surface (50B) is coated with a reflective coating (66) that reflects half of the width of the incoming beams towards reflective coating stripes (60) on the first surface (50A) thereby interleaving the reflected beams (44B) between the remainder of the incoming beams (44A) in order to increase the filling factor of the overall laser beam.