Compound laser system for high power density

摘要

The present invention provides compound laser system for generating beams of high brightness and high power density by constructive phase coherent combination of the beams generated by a number of individual sources of coherent radiation. In one preferred embodiment, it provides a system for the delivery of high powered output from a set of inexpensive, comparatively low-powered diode lasers and comprises three subsystems: a diode laser subsystem which is the source of power for the system; a combiner subsystem which combines the output of the diode lasers; and, an optional delivery subsystem which may be needed to deliver the combined output to its desired destination for industrial or medical applications. The combiner subsystem may be implemented in its entirety as an Integrated Optical Combiner, a single component, performing all the combiner subsystem's functions. Different preferred embodiments of Phase Coherent Integrated Optical Combiners are proposed. One of them employs an optical fiber having a shaped core to provide efficient matching to the geometry of typical laser diodes. Each diode laser's output of a diode laser array is captured by a single optical fiber with a core whose cross-sectional shape is contoured so that major and minor axes of a laser diode's output shape are not larger than major and minor axes of a optical waveguide and whose numerical apertures are closely matched to the numerical apertures in the directions of corresponding axes. <IMAGE>