Coherent beam combining of cylindrical vector beams for power scaling

Opt Lett. 2023 Oct 1;48(19):5121-5124. doi: 10.1364/OL.497511.

Abstract

Coherent beam combining (CBC) of cylindrical vector beams (CVBs) based on an active phase controller is proposed and demonstrated. Experimentally, two pieces of spatially variant wave plates (S-wave plate) were employed as vector mode convertors for two individual 1064-nm fiber amplifier channels. When the system was in a closed loop, a combined output power of 10 W and a CBC efficiency of higher than 94% were achieved, for both TM01 (radially polarized) mode and TE01 (azimuthally polarized) mode cases. Moreover, the laser system showed a high vector mode purity, which was measured to be ∼97.4% (TM01) and ∼97.3% (TE01). To the best of knowledge, this could possibly be the first demonstration of CBC of CVBs, which paves the way for power scaling of CVBs.