Abstract

There is continuing interest in increasing the power and improving the beam quality of laser sources for a variety of applications including materials processing, pumping, power transmission, and illumination. One approach is to continue to develop improved lasers with higher power and good beam quality. Another approach, particularly relevant to semiconductor and fiber lasers, is to beam combine large arrays of lasers. Beam combining has become increasing viable over the past decade as the community has developed a better understanding of the requirements imposed by beam combining, and various implementations have been successfully demonstrated in the laboratory.

© 2017 IEEE