Abstract
We have demonstrated active coherent beam combination (CBC) of up to 218 semiconductor amplifiers with cw output using up to eleven one-dimensional 21-element individually addressable diode amplifier arrays operating at . The amplifier array elements are slab-coupled-optical-waveguide semiconductor amplifiers (SCOWAs) set up in a master-oscillator–power-amplifier configuration. Diffractive optical elements divide the master-oscillator beam to seed multiple arrays of SCOWAs. A SCOWA was phase actuated by adjusting the drive current to each element and controlled using a stochastic-parallel-gradient-descent (SPGD) algorithm for the active CBC. The SPGD is a hill-climbing algorithm that maximizes on-axis intensity in the far field, providing phase locking without needing a reference beam.
© 2011 Optical Society of America
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