Cascaded injection resonator for coherent beam combining of laser arrays

Patent · 21 October 2008

OSTI ID:985180

Kireev, Vassili ^[1]; Liu, Yun; Protopopescu, Vladimir ^[2]; Braiman, Yehuda ^[3]

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1. Sunnyvale, CA
2. Knoxville, TN
3. Oak Ridge, TN

The invention provides a cascaded injection resonator for coherent beam combining of laser arrays. The resonator comprises a plurality of laser emitters arranged along at least one plane and a beam sampler for reflecting at least a portion of each laser beam that impinges on the beam sampler, the portion of each laser beam from one of the laser emitters being reflected back to another one of the laser emitters to cause a beam to be generated from the other one of the laser emitters to the beam reflector. The beam sampler also transmits a portion of each laser beam to produce a laser output beam such that a plurality of laser output beams of the same frequency are produced. An injection laser beam is directed to a first laser emitter to begin a process of generating and reflecting a laser beam from one laser emitter to another laser emitter in the plurality. A method of practicing the invention is also disclosed.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• Assignee: UT-Battelle, LLC (Oak Ridge, TN); University of Tennessee Research Foundation (Knoxville, TN)
• Patent Number(s): 7,440,483
• Application Number: 11/652,238
• OSTI ID: 985180
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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