Self-Phase-Locked Distributed Gain Laser Architecture

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a laser architecture to coherently combine energy from spatially distributed gain sources. Using a combination of lenslet arrays (to split and combine separate beams) or diffractive optical elements, each source can be phase-matched into an effective single source. While both high power and high efficiency laser sources are desired for many applications, limitations on their development and use include power scaling among the many gain materials due to excessive optical intensity. Moreover, as power among many gain elements can be increased, combining the power efficiency has thusfar proven elusive.