First experimental demonstration of coherent beam combining of more than 100 beams

Abstract

Coherent beam combining of 107 beams has been demonstrated for the first time to the best of our knowledge. When the system was in closed loop, the pattern in far-field was stable and the fringe contrast was <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m1"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo form="prefix">&gt;</mml:mo> <mml:mn>96</mml:mn> <mml:mi>%</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The impact of the dynamic tilt error, the piston error, and power inconsistency was theoretically analyzed. Meanwhile, the distribution law of dynamic tilt error was estimated and the correlation of the tilt dithering of different axis was analyzed statistically. The ratio of power in the central lobe was <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m2"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo form="prefix">∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>22.5</mml:mn> <mml:mi>%</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . The phase residue error in the closed loop was <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m3"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo form="prefix">∼</mml:mo> <mml:mi>λ</mml:mi> <mml:mo>/</mml:mo> <mml:mn>22</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , which was evaluated by the root-mean-square error of the signal generated from the photoelectric detector.