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DIRECTED
ENERGY
PROFESSIONAL
SOCIETY
Abstract: 24-Systems-057
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UNCLASSIFIED, PUBLIC RELEASE
Coherent Beam Combining of Supercontinuum Lasers
Supercontinuum lasers are the brightest white light sources produced by humans. The highest power supercontinuum lasers developed at Lincoln Laboratory are brighter than the sun by several orders of magnitude. These sources work by converting high power laser pulses into broadband light using several nonlinear processes in fiber optics. High power narrowband light is generated using fiber amplifiers, and the light is squeezed into a photonic crystal fiber with a small core diameter surrounded by air holes. This results in very high field intensities which stimulate nonlinear effects in the glass core and broaden the spectrum over an octave of bandwidth (~ typically 500–2400 nm). Nonlinear Raman scattering dissipates heat in the fiber, however, and conventional supercontinuum sources are reaching thermal limits to the amount of power they can produce. In order to overcome thermal power limitations, Lincoln Laboratory is investigating the feasibility of coherently combining independent supercontinuum channels. We will describe the principle behind this technology, the testbed built to demonstrate these principles, and summarize current results and future work.
Distribution authorized to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors. Other requests for this document must be referred to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Technology Office.
This material is based upon work supported by the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering under Air Force Contract No. FA8702-15-D-0001. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
UNCLASSIFIED, PUBLIC RELEASE
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