Analysis of Major Error Factors in Coherent Beam Combination: Phase, Tip Tilt, Polarization Angle, and Beam Quality

Abstract

The major error factors that degrade the efficiency of coherent beam combining (CBC) are numerically studied in a comprehensive manner, paying particular attention to phase, tip-tilt, polarization angle, and beam quality. The power in the bucket (PIB), normalized to the zero-error PIB, is used as a figure of merit to quantify the effect of each error factor. To maintain a normalized PIB greater than or equal to 95% in a 3-channel CBC configuration, the errors in phase, tip-tilt, and polarization angle should be less than 1.06 radians, 1.25 μm, and 1.06 radians respectively, when each of the three parameters is calculated independently with the other two set to zero. In a worst-case scenario of the composite errors within the parameter range for the independent-95%-normalized-PIB condition, the aggregate effect would reduce the normalized PIB to 83.8%. It is noteworthy that the PIB performances of a CBC system, depending on phase and polarization-angle errors, share the same characteristic feature. A statistical approach for each error factor is also introduced, to assess a CBC system with an extended number of channels. The impact of the laser’s beam-quality factor M2 on the combining efficiency is also analyzed, based on a super-Gaussian beam. When M2 increases from 1 to 1.3, the normalized PIB is reduced by 2.6%, 11.8%, 12.8%, and 13.2% for a single-channel configuration and 3-, 7-, and 19-channel CBC configurations respectively. This comprehensive numerical study is expected to pave the way for advances in the evaluation and design of multichannel CBC systems and other related applications. © 2024 Current Optics and Photonics.