Volume Bragg grating external cavities for the passive phase locking of high-brightness diode laser arrays: theoretical and experimental study

David Pabœuf (1) , Deepak Vijayakumar (2) , Ole Bjarlin Jensen (2) , Birgit Thestrup (2) , Jun Lim (3) , Slawomir Sujecki (3) , Eric Larkins (3) , Gaëlle Lucas-Leclin (1) , Patrick Georges (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Elsa
2 DTU - Department of Photonics Engineering
3 The School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering

We describe the theoretical modeling of the external-cavity operation of a phase-locked array of diode lasers in two configurations, the self-imaging cavity based on the Talbot effect and the angular-filtering cavity. Complex filtering functions, such as the transmission or reflection of a volume Bragg grating (VBG), may be introduced in the external-cavity description. Experiments with high-brightness diode laser arrays were also conducted. The experimental results are carefully analyzed with regard to the numerical simulations, and the beneficial effect of the spectral selectivity of VBGs is demonstrated.

Keywords: diode laser arrays; coherent combining

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]; Optics / Photonic

David Pabœuf, Deepak Vijayakumar, Ole Bjarlin Jensen, Birgit Thestrup, Jun Lim, et al.. Volume Bragg grating external cavities for the passive phase locking of high-brightness diode laser arrays: theoretical and experimental study. Journal of the Optical Society of America B, 2011, 28 (5), pp.1289-1299. ⟨hal-00589260⟩