High-power high-energy four-channel fiber coherent beam combined system

SHI Zhuo; CHANG Hongxiang; WANG Dongliang; GUO Hongyu; DONG Zikai; DU Zhihang; LIANG Chengbin; LI Can; ZHOU Pu; WEI Zhiyi; CHANG Guoqing

doi:10.7498/aps.74.20241476

Abstract

Ultrafast fiber laser sources with mJ-level pulse energy and kilo-watt average power are of particular importance for various science fields such as attosecond lasers. Currently, several large-scale facilities for attosecond lasers, including ELI-ALPS in Europe, SECUF in China, NeXUS in America and ALFA in Japan are under construction. High-performance femtosecond driven lasers are crucial for attosecond lasers and various ultrafast laser facilities. Fiber lasers have a large surface-to-volume ratio, which enables efficient cooling and is suitable for high average power amplification. However, due to small mode area of optical fibers, detrimental nonlinear optical effects such as self-phase modulation, four-wave mixing, and stimulated Raman scattering limit the peak power of pulse to hundreds of MW, corresponding to pulse energy of hundreds of μJ for femtosecond pulses in large mode area rod-type fibers. In addition, the average power of fiber lasers is limited by transverse mode instability, which reduces the stability and quality of beams above a certain threshold. In rod-type fibers, the threshold is about 250 W. Neither average power nor pulse energy emitted by single fiber meets the requirement for attosecond laser generation.The average power and pulse energy can be further scaled by coherent beam combination, which involves splitting pulses caused by an frontend laser and recombining them after amplification. It is essential for coherent beam combination to maintain the coherence of pulse replicas, which usually involves high speed photodiode detectors, piezo-driven mirrors, and other electronics forming a feedback system to actively control the phase of all replicas. We present a high-energy high-power ultrafast fiber laser system by using filled-aperture coherent combination of four ytterbium-doped rod-type fiber amplifiers. The phase control is achieved by using stochastic parallel gradient descent method. The frontend includes a passively mode-locked Yb-fiber oscillator, a stretcher, a pulse picker, and three fiber pre-amplifiers, which delivers 1 MHz stretched pulses centered at 1032 nm with 700 ps duration and 20 W average power. The pulse is split into four replicas by polarization beam-splitter and half-wave plate pairs, and the replicas pass through delay lines formed by piezo-driven mirrors before amplification. The pulse replicas are equally split and amplified to ensure the same accumulated nonlinear phase, and are combined by thin film polarizer and half-wave plate pairs. A small portion of the combined pulse is split and collected by a photodiode detector after being filtered spectrally and spatially, serving as a signal for controlling phase. The combined pulse is compressed by a compressor using a double-pass diffraction grating pair consisting of two 1739 l/mm gratings.At a repetition rate of 1 MHz, our four-channel Yb-fiber coherent beam combination system generates a combined average power value of 753 W and a combination efficiency of 87%. By utilizing an adjustable pulse stretcher and compressor, a 0.67 mJ, 242 fs near transform-limited pulse can be generated with a compressing efficiency of 89%. The compressed pulse is centered at 1032 nm, and the spectrum width is 8.8-nm. In the 30 min measurement, the root-mean-square of average power is less than 1% , while the residual phase error is less than λ/23, indicating excellent stability on different time scales. The beam quality factor of the 0.67 mJ compressed pulses is 1.17×1.11. At 500 kHz, we obtain pulses of 1.07 mJ and 247 fs with average power of 534 W, exhibiting similar efficiency, long-term stability, and beam quality. The residual phase error decreases below λ/29, indicating better short-term stability. Further scaling power and energy can be achieved by increasing the number of channels. By adding the delay stabilization system and pointing stabilization system, which are currently under development, an eight-channel CBC system can be used to generate 1 kW, 2 mJ pulses.In this work, we implement a four-channel coherent beam combining system based on the SPGD method, and obtain compressed pulses of 673 W, 673 µJ, and 242 fs at 1 MHz and 534 W, 1.07 mJ, and 247 fs at 500 kHz. Both power and energy can be further improved by increasing the channel number, and adding the delay stabilization system and pointing stabilization system which are under construction. By adding coherent pulse stacking amplification technology, the coherent beam combining system ought to generate pulse energy as high as 100 mJ, which constitutes the energy source for applications such as laser wake-field acceleration.

Keywords:

Authors and contacts

1.
Key Laboratory of Optical Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
2.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
3.
Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan 523808, China
4.
College of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China

Corresponding author: CHANG Guoqing, guoqing.chang@iphy.ac.cn

Funds: Project supported by the Key Deployment Special Research Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. PTYQ2022YZ0001), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62175255, 62227822), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2021YFB3602602).

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References

[1]	Chang G Q, Wei Z Y 2020 iScience 23 101101 Google Scholar
[2]	Kirsche A, Gebhardt M, Klas R, Eisenbach L, Eschen W, Buldt J, Stark H, Rothhardt J, Limpert J 2023 Opt. Express 31 2744 Google Scholar
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Cited By

图 1 四路相干合成系统示意图, 其中Front end为光纤前端, QWP为1/4波片, HWP为半波片, TFP为薄膜偏振片, DM为双色镜, HR为高反镜, L为透镜, PBS为偏振分束棱镜, PZT为压电陶瓷, LD为半导体泵浦源, Rod-type fiber为棒状光纤, BS为分束镜, Filter为滤波片, PD为光电探测器, Control circuit为电控锁相回路, TG为透射光栅对

Figure 1. Schematic setup of the four-channel coherent beam combining system, where Front end is fiber front end, QWP is quarter-wave plate, HWP is half-wave plate, TFP is thin-film polarizer, DM is dichroic mirror, HR is high-reflection mirror, L is lens, PBS is polarizing beam splitter, PZT is piezo-electric ceramic transducer, LD is laser diode pump, Rod-type fiber is rod photonic crystal fiber, BS is beam splitter, Filter is spectrum filter, PD is photodetector, Control circuit is electronic phase control circuit, TG is transmission gratings.

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图 2 输出功率和效率与泵浦功率的关系

Figure 2. Relationship between output power, efficiency and pump power.

DownLoad: Full-Size Img PowerPoint

图 3 压缩后脉冲的自相关、光谱与光束质量

Figure 3. Autocorrelation trace, spectrum and beam quality factor of compressed pulse.

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图 4 不同时间尺度下的功率稳定性

Figure 4. Power stability under different time scales.

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图 5 500 kHz时输出功率和效率与泵浦功率的关系

Figure 5. Relationship between output power, efficiency and pump power at 500 kHz.

DownLoad: Full-Size Img PowerPoint

图 6 500 kHz时的自相关、光谱与功率稳定性

Figure 6. Autocorrelation trace, spectrum and power stability at 500 kHz.

DownLoad: Full-Size Img PowerPoint

map

[1]	Chang G Q, Wei Z Y 2020 iScience 23 101101 Google Scholar
[2]	Kirsche A, Gebhardt M, Klas R, Eisenbach L, Eschen W, Buldt J, Stark H, Rothhardt J, Limpert J 2023 Opt. Express 31 2744 Google Scholar
[3]	Eidam T, Rothhardt J, Stutzki F, Jansen F, Hädrich S, Carstens H, Jauregui C, Limpert J, Tünnermann A 2011 Opt. Express 19 255 Google Scholar
[4]	Eidam T, Wirth C, Jauregui C, Stutzki F, Jansen F, Otto H J, Schmidt O, Schreiber T, Limpert J, Tünnermann A 2011 Opt. Express 19 13218 Google Scholar
[5]	Kienel M, Müller M, Klenke A, Limpert J, Tünnermann A 2016 Opt. Lett. 41 3343 Google Scholar
[6]	Wan P, Yang L M, Liu J 2013 Opt. Express 21 29854 Google Scholar
[7]	Stark H, Benner M, Buldt J, Klenke A, Limpert J 2023 Opt. Lett. 48 3007 Google Scholar
[8]	Müller M, Aleshire C, Klenke A, Haddad E, Légaré F, Tünnermann A, Limpert J 2020 Opt. Lett. 45 3083 Google Scholar
[9]	Jauregui C, Stihler C, Limpert J 2020 Adv. Opt. Photon. 12 429 Google Scholar
[10]	Pedersen M E, Johansen M M, Olesen A S, Michieletto M, Gaponenko M, Maack M D 2022 Opt. Lett. 47 5172 Google Scholar
[11]	王栋梁, 史卓, 王井上, 吴洪悦, 张晓辉, 常国庆 2024 73 134204 Google Scholar Wang D L, Shi Z, Wang J S, Wu H Y, Zhang X H, Chang G Q 2024 Acta Phys. Sin. 73 134204 Google Scholar
[12]	Peng S X, Wang Z H, Hu F L, Li Z Y, Zhang Q B, Lu P X 2024 Front. Optoelectron. 17 3 Google Scholar
[13]	王志浩, 彭双喜, 徐浩, 李政言, 张庆斌, 陆培祥 2024 光学学报 44 1732017 Google Scholar Wang Z H, Peng S X, Xu H, Li Z Y, Zhang Q B, Lu P X 2024 Acta Opt. Sin. 44 1732017 Google Scholar
[14]	常洪祥, 靳凯凯, 张雨秋, 张嘉怡, 金坤, 李灿, 粟荣涛, 冷进勇, 周朴 2023 光学学报 43 1714008 Google Scholar Chang H X, Jin K K, Zhang Y Q, Zhang J Y, Jin K, Li C, Su R T, Leng J Y, Zhou P 2023 Acta Opt. Sin. 43 1714008 Google Scholar
[15]	王涛, 李灿, 刘洋, 任博, 唐振强, 常洪祥, 谢戈辉, 郭琨, 吴坚, 许将明, 冷进勇, 马鹏飞, 粟荣涛, 李文雪, 周朴 2023 红外与激光工程 52 20220869 Google Scholar Wang T, Li C, Liu Y, Ren B, Tang Z Q, Chang H X, Xie G H, Guo K, Wu J, Xu J M, Leng J Y, Ma P F, Su R T, Li W X, Zhou P 2023 Infrared Laser Eng. 52 20220869 Google Scholar
[16]	Ren B, Chang H X, Li C, Wang T, Jin K K, Zhang J Y, Guo K, Su R T, Leng J Y, Zhou P 2024 Front. Optoelectron. 17 14 Google Scholar
[17]	Schimpf D N, Eidam T, Seise E, Hädrich S, Limpert J, Tünnermann A 2009 Opt. Express 17 18774 Google Scholar
[18]	Yu C X, Kansky J E, Shaw S E J, Murphy D V, Higgs C 2006 Electron. Lett. 42 1024 Google Scholar
[19]	Weiss S B, Weber M E, Goodno G D 2012 Opt. Lett. 37 455 Google Scholar
[20]	Goodno G D, Weiss S B 2012 Opt. Express 20 14945 Google Scholar
[21]	Rainville A, Whittlesey M, Pasquale C, et al. 2024 Optica 11 1540 Google Scholar

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