Basic Considerations On Coherent Combining of Ultrashort Laser Pulses

Basic considerations on coherent combining of
ultrashort laser pulses

Arno Klenke,1,3,* Enrico Seise,1,3 Jens Limpert,1,2,3 and Andreas Tnnermann1,2,3
1
Institute of Applied Physics, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Albert-Einstein-Str. 15, 07745 Jena, Germany
2
Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, Albert-Einstein-Str. 7, 07743 Jena, Germany
3
Helmholtz-Institute Jena, Helmholtzweg 4, 07743 Jena, Germany
*
arno.klenke@uni-jena.de
Abstract: Coherent combining is a novel approach to scale the performance

of laser amplifiers. The use of ultrashort pulses in a coherent combining
setup results in new challenges compared to continuous wave operation or
to pulses on the nanosecond timescale, because temporal and spectral
effects such as self-phase modulation, dispersion and the optical path length
difference between the pulses have to be considered. In this paper the
impact of these effects on the combining process has been investigated and
simple analytical equations for the evaluation of this impact have been
obtained. These formulas provide design guidelines for laser systems using
coherent combining. The results show that, in spite of the temporal and
spectral effects mentioned above, for a carefully adjusted and stabilized
system an excellent efficiency of the combining process can still be
achieved.
2011 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (140.7090) Ultrafast lasers; (060.2320) Fiber optics amplifiers and oscillators;
(140.3298) Laser beam combining.
References and links

1. C. R. E. Baer, Ch. Krnkel, C. J. Saraceno, O. H. Heckl, M. Golling, R. Peters, K. Petermann, Th. Sdmeyer, G.
Huber, and U. Keller, Femtosecond thin-disk laser with 141 W of average power, Opt. Lett. 35(13), 2302
2304 (2010), http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-35-13-2302.
2. P. Russbueldt, T. Mans, G. Rotarius, J. Weitenberg, H. D. Hoffmann, and R. Poprawe, 400W Yb:YAG Innoslab
fs-Amplifier, Opt. Express 17(15), 1223012245 (2009),
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-17-15-12230.
3. T. Eidam, S. Hanf, E. Seise, T. V. Andersen, Th. Gabler, Ch. Wirth, Th. Schreiber, J. Limpert, and A.
Tnnermann, Femtosecond fiber CPA system emitting 830 W average output power, Opt. Lett. 35(2), 9496
(2010), http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-35-2-94.
4. T. Eidam, J. Rothhardt, F. Stutzki, F. Jansen, S. Hdrich, H. Carstens, C. Jauregui, J. Limpert, and A.
Tnnermann, Fiber chirped-pulse amplification system emitting 3.8 GW peak power, Opt. Express 19(1), 255
260 (2011), http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-19-1-255.
5. R. Xiao, J. Hou, M. Liu, and Z. F. Jiang, Coherent combining technology of master oscillator power amplifier
fiber arrays, Opt. Express 16(3), 20152022 (2008), http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-16-
3-2015.
6. R. Uberna, A. Bratcher, T. G. Alley, A. D. Sanchez, A. S. Flores, and B. Pulford, Coherent combination of high
power fiber amplifiers in a two-dimensional re-imaging waveguide, Opt. Express 18(13), 1354713553 (2010),
7. E. Seise, A. Klenke, J. Limpert, and A. Tnnermann, Coherent addition of fiber-amplified ultrashort laser
pulses, Opt. Express 18(26), 2782727835 (2010), http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-18-
26-27827.
8. E. Seise, A. Klenke, S. Breitkopf, M. Pltner, J. Limpert, and A. Tnnermann, Coherently combined fiber laser
system delivering 120 J femtosecond pulses, Opt. Lett. 36(4), 439441 (2011),
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-36-4-439.
9. I. Pupeza, T. Eidam, J. Rauschenberger, B. Bernhardt, A. Ozawa, E. Fill, A. Apolonski, T. Udem, J. Limpert, Z.
A. Alahmed, A. M. Azzeer, A. Tnnermann, T. W. Hnsch, and F. Krausz, Power scaling of a high-repetition-
rate enhancement cavity, Opt. Lett. 35(12), 20522054 (2010),
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?&uri=ol-35-12-2052.
10. G. D. Goodno, C. C. Shih, and J. E. Rothenberg, Perturbative analysis of coherent combining efficiency with
mismatched lasers, Opt. Express 18(24), 2540325414 (2010),
#151267 - $15.00 USD Received 18 Jul 2011; revised 23 Sep 2011; accepted 18 Nov 2011; published 28 Nov 2011
(C) 2011 OSA 5 December 2011 / Vol. 19, No. 25 / OPTICS EXPRESS 25379
11. L. Daniault, M. Hanna, L. Lombard, Y. Zaouter, E. Mottay, D. Goular, P. Bourdon, F. Druon, and P. Georges,
Coherent beam combining of two femtosecond fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers, Opt. Lett. 36(5), 621623
(2011), http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ol/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-36-5-621.
12. T. W. Hnsch and B. Couillaud, Laser frequency stabilization by polarization spectroscopy of a reflecting
reference cavity, Opt. Commun. 35(3), 441444 (1980).
13. G. P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics 2nd Edition (Academic Press, 1995)
14. D. N. Schimpf, E. Seise, J. Limpert, and A. Tnnermann, Self-phase modulation compensated by positive
dispersion in chirped-pulse systems, Opt. Express 17(7), 49975007 (2009),
15. M. D. Perry, T. Ditmire, and B. C. Stuart, Self-phase modulation in chirped-pulse amplification, Opt. Lett.
19(24), 21492151 (1994), http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-19-24-2149.
1. Introduction
In recent decades multiple amplification schemes for ultrashort laser pulses have been
investigated and a significant progress has been made in scaling their pulse energy and
average power [14]. Furthermore, in research laboratories all these schemes have been
pushed to their specific limits, given by e.g. thermo-optical or nonlinear effects, damage
thresholds or available pump power. Hence, a new approach should be considered. Coherent
combining of amplifiers is a well-known scaling concept in the continuous wave regime [5-6].
In the ultrashort pulse regime, coherent combination makes it possible to scale the pulse
energy, as well as the average power independently from the amplification scheme. This
concept has already been demonstrated for two single mode fiber amplifiers, delivering
ultrashort pulses with a combining efficiency of over 95% [7]. Additionally, by using LMA
fibers, combined pulse energies of 120J have been already achieved [8]. It should be noted,
however, that the concept itself is not limited to fiber lasers but it can be used with any
amplification scheme and it might even provide a way to go beyond the PW level. A related
approach to the coherent combining of amplifiers is the use of an external enhancement
cavity. In such a cavity, a circulating pulse interferes constructively with the next pulses
emitted from the laser source. This results in an intracavity pulse with a drastically increased
pulse energy. Using this approach a scaling of the peak power by a factor of > 1000 has been
demonstrated [9]. However, in this setup, the high pulse energies are only available inside of
the cavity. In spite of this, the effects described in this paper might also occur in enhancement
cavities and they will have a similar detrimental impact.
Fig. 1. Schematic setup of coherent addition of ultrashort laser pulses; : element for path
length matching
The general setup for the coherent combination of N amplifiers is shown in Fig. 1. The
ultrashort pulses from one mode-locked laser are split into N channels to start with mutually
coherent pulses. These pulses are then amplified in their specific channel and finally
recombined. An additional element has to be added in N-1 channels to match and stabilize the
optical path lengths in the channels and ensure a constructive interference. Additionally, a
stretcher and a compressor can be added to the system to create a chirped-pulse amplification
(CPA) system. Assuming an identical behavior of all channels and an ideal combining
element, the performance of the system could be in principle scaled by a factor of N compared
to a single amplifier. However, when using ultrashort pulses, effects like dispersion and self-
phase modulation (SPM), as well as optical path length differences (OPD) between the pulses,
will affect the temporal and spectral phases of the combined pulses and, thus, lead to a non-
perfect combination of the pulses. In order to characterize the performance of the combination
process a figure of merit has been defined. In this paper, the dependency of this figure of
merit on the effects mentioned above will be explored, under the assumption that the spectral
intensity profiles of the pulses, as well as the spatial intensity and phase profiles of the beams
are identical. An in-depth analysis of the detrimental effects caused by an imperfect overlap of
the beams has already been published [10].
2. General considerations on coherent beam combining of ultrashort pulses
The combining element plays an important role in the combining process, since it has to
merge the beams coming from spatially separated amplification stages into one beam while
preserving the beam quality and keeping losses as low as possible. Different elements have
been successfully proposed such as partially reflective surfaces [11] or polarization dependent
beam splitters [7]. Additionally, in the case of fiber lasers, fiber integrated couplers are
another alternative. While all of these elements can in principle just combine two beams, by
cascading them, the number of channels to be combined can be increased. Depending on the
type of combining element, phase differences between the incoming pulses, e.g. OPDs, will
have a different effect on the combined beam.
Fig. 2. Combining process using (a) a partially reflective surface and (b) a polarization
dependent cube.
In the case of a partially reflective surface (Fig. 2a), the power of the combined beam will
depend on the constructive interference of the incident beams, while the rest of the power, i.e.
that containing the non-interfering parts, will be emitted as a secondary beam in a different
direction (see Fig. 2a). For every spectral component, the well-known interference formula
can be used:

P( ) P0 ( ) 1 cos (1)
with P0() being the spectral power of the beams to be combined (they are assumed to have
an identical beam profile) and () being the spectral phase difference between them. In
order to define a figure of merit (FOM) suitable for characterizing the combining process, the
power in the combined beam (Pcomb) and the secondary beam (Psecondary) can be measured and
used in the following calculation for the visibility:
Pcomb Psec ondary
FOM (2)
Pcomb Psec ondary
On the other hand, as shown in Fig. 2b, the combining process of two pulses can also be
carried out using a polarization beam splitter. These elements are commercially available with
excellent specifications, such as low losses and high damage thresholds. In this case, the two
incident beams to be combined have to be one s- and the other p-polarized. This results in the
combined beam being emitted exclusively from one port of the cube. Deviations from
perfectly linearly polarized incident pulses and imperfections of the cube itself result in a
power output at the so-called dark port and, therefore, in a reduction of the maximum
achievable power of the combined beam. However, any spectral and/or temporal phase
difference between the pulses will not be reflected in the power of the combined beam, but in
its polarization state instead. Hence, a measurement of the polarization state is required to
estimate the FOM of the combined beam.
Placing an analyzer at an angle of 45 behind the transmission port of the polarization
beam splitter leads to an interference that can be expressed with Eq. (1). In this way the result
is basically the same as for a partially reflective element. The definition of the figure of merit
can also be used here by measuring the maximum and minimum average power obtained
when rotating the analyzer. The figure of merit represents in this case the degree of linear
polarization (DOLP) of the combined beam, and can be calculated as follows:
Pmax Pmin
FOM DOLP (3)
Pmax Pmin
For two pulses with identical spectral intensities and assuming a perfect spatial overlap of
the beams, the figure of merit will deliver a value between 0 and 1. Coherent interference
results in strong modulations of the FOM for OPDs in the subwavelength region and there are
local maxima with the periodicity equal to the wavelength. This resembles the behavior in the
continuous wave regime. However, in the pulsed regime, the frequency dependence of the
spectral phase differences has to be taken into account.
For a spectral phase difference (), the figure of merit can be analytically calculated at
each frequency. Thus, as seen in Eq. (1), if cos(()) 0, then more power of this spectral
component is in the combined beam than in the secondary beam. In this case, the maximum
power of the combined beam Pmax() equals P() and Pmin() = 2P0() - Pmax(). For every
spectral component, the figure of merit can now be calculated by using Eq. (2). For
cos(()) < 0, on the other hand, more power of this spectral component would instead be
in the secondary beam. This results in a swap of the formula for Pmax and Pmin and corresponds
to the negative solution in the following calculation:
Pmax ( ) Pmin ( ) 2 P0 ( ) cos

FOM cos (4)
Pmax ( ) Pmin ( ) 2 P0 ( )
To calculate the FOM for the whole pulse, this result has to be weighted with the spectral
intensity profile before being finally integrated over frequency:
FOM C s( ) FOM ( ) d C s( ) cos d (5)
with the normalized spectral intensity s() of the power P0() and the normalization factor
C s( ) d 1 . Please note that FOM() can be negative for some spectral components in
this calculation. It is important to note that the sign in Eq. (4) has to be equal for all spectral
components, and it should be chosen in such a way that the result of Eq. (4) is positive. Thus,
if the function () can be calculated for a certain effect (e.g. SPM), it is now possible to
estimate the FOM degradation that this effect causes. It is worth noting that the FOM is
additionally a useful parameter to stabilize the system. In other words, the control loop can
use the FOM as its feedback/error parameter and it can thus be locked to the best figure of
merit. This can be done by using a phase modulation based locking system or with the
Hnsch-Couillaud mechanism [12] in the case of polarization combining.
3. Influence of optical path length differences on the combining process
In this section the impact of OPDs between the pulses on the combining process is discussed.
Fig. 3. Dependency of the local maxima of the FOM on a OPD for Gaussian pulses with a
bandwidth up to 10nm at a typical center wavelength of 1030nm. The white line defines the
boundary where the FOM falls below 95%.
An OPD between the two pulses is translated in a linear phase difference. The spectral
phase shift of the OPD is thus given by:
l
(6)
c0
with the OPD l and the speed of light c0. As described in section 2, the interesting case is
when l becomes a multiple of the wavelength 0, because in this case a local maximum for
the combined power and, therefore, a local maximum for the FOM is reached. A decay of the
FOM at these maxima is expected if the temporal overlap of the pulses is reduced. It should
be noted that an OPD has the same impact for a chirped pulse as it would have for the
corresponding transform limited pulse. This can be seen by interfering two pulses with the
electric fields E1 and E2 and the common spectral intensity profile E0():
1 ichirp i t
E1 t E e e d
2
0
1 i chirp i delay i t
E t E e e e d (7)
2
2 0
E t
1
2
E t E t
1 2
The pulses have the same chirp phase chirp() and there is an additional spectral phase
difference delay() for the OPD. The fluence of the combined pulse can now be calculated
using Parsevals theorem to investigate the impact of the chirp on the FOM:
i chirp delay
2
1 ichirp
F ~ E t dt E d
2 2
2
2
E 0 e e d
(8)
E0
2

1 cos delay d
The result shows that there is no dependency of the fluence of the combined pulse energy
and therefore no dependency of the FOM on the chirp phase chirp(). For Gaussian pulses,
the normalized spectral intensity is defined as:
2
0
4 ln 2
s e FWHM
(9)
with the Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) bandwidth FWHM. By setting l k 0 and
using Eqs. (5), 6, 9, the FOM at these points can be analytically calculated:
2
2 kFWHM
0

FOM C s( ) cos d e 16 ln 2
(10)
In Fig. 3, the result is depicted as a function of the OPD and of the spectral bandwidth. A
center wavelength of 1030nm has been assumed to simulate a system working in the near
infrared spectral region. The calculation has been done for bandwidths up to 10nm, which
corresponds to pulses with transform limited pulse durations as short as ~150fs. A strong
dependency of the acceptable delay on the signal bandwidth is immediately recognizable. For
a system with a bandwidth of about 5nm, a OPD as large as 25 wavelengths (i.e. about 25m
in this case), is sufficient to keep the FOM above 90%. In comparison for shorter pulses
(~10nm bandwidth) this value will drop to about 12m. As can be seen from Eq. (10), the
accuracy of the delay adjustment has to be increased by the same factor as the bandwidth to
keep the FOM constant. It should be noted again that the OPD has to be stabilized to be as
close as possible to one of the local maxima of the FOM. Only a variation of a fraction of
wavelength is acceptable here.
4. Influences of SPM and dispersion on the combining process
When using ultrashort pulses special attention has to be paid to dispersion and nonlinear
effects. If these effects impact the pulses in both channels in the same way, the spectral phase
difference will be zero and according to Eq. (5) a perfect combination is still possible.
However, in a realistic setup there will be small mismatches between the lengths of the
dispersive elements of each channel (LDE), as well as input and output power differences
caused by misalignments and time dependent fluctuations. These will result in spectral phase
differences which will, in turn, reduce the achievable FOM. In general, dispersion acts in the
spectral domain and self-phase modulation in the time domain, making it fairly difficult to
calculate the overall phase differences. This can be done with simulations based on the
Fourier split-step algorithm [13]. However, for strongly stretched pulses like in a CPA
system, it is possible to give a formula for the spectral phase caused by second order
dispersion and SPM when the center frequency is 0 [14]:
1
2 L 0 Bs 0
2
(11)
2
2
with the B-Integral B
n I z dz
2 [15], the LDE L and the second order dispersion
coefficient 2. Hence, the spectral phase difference for the case of equal spectral intensities
s() is:
1
2 L 0 Bs 0
2
(12)
2
which only depends on the B-Integral difference B and LDE difference L of the two pulses.
The parameter L is especially important for fiber lasers because of the large LDE typical of
these devices. In reality, to achieve the best FOM, these phase differences will be partially
compensated for by introducing an additional OPD between the pulses. This OPD is chosen to
compensate the spectral phase difference for the center frequency:
l
c 0 0 B
c0
(13)
l 0
c B B 1 B for 0 0
c0 0 0
While it is possible to calculate the FOM using a simulation with Eq. (2), it is also
interesting to find analytical solutions. However, solving the integral in Eq. (5) proves to be
difficult due to the cosine term. For small phase differences () < /4, a Taylor expansion
of the cosine function up to the second order turns out to result in an error of less than 2%. By
using Eq. (5),9,12-13, the FOM can now be calculated:
FOM C s ( ) cos c d
1 1 1 2 3
1 B 2
FWHM 4 2 2 L2 (14)
2 2 2 3 512 ln(2)
1 1
1 FWHM 2 LB
2
16 ln(2) 2 2
So the quality of the combining process can be analytically calculated with just 4
parameters: B, L, the dispersion coefficient 2 and the spectral bandwidth FWHM. If we
apply the condition () < /4 for all the spectral components of s() with an intensity
above 1/e, we can estimate the boundaries for the approximation:
2 ln 2
B
4
1 e
1 1
1.2 rad and L
2FWHM 2
1.0 m (for a bandwidth of 5nm)
Fig. 4. Analytically calculated FOM for Gaussian pulses with a bandwidth of (a) 5nm, (b)
10nm, (c) 15nm propagating through fused silica, when a B-Integral or LDE difference is
introduced.
The analytically calculated FOM depending on B and L is shown in Fig. 4. Different

bandwidths were chosen to show the dependence of the FOM on this parameter. The
maximum deviation of the FOM between this analytically calculated solution and a
simulation is 1%, which confirms the validity of the approximation taken to obtain Eq. (14).
The graphs above show that for small deviations of the LDE, which should easily be
realizable in a setup, a B-Integral difference B of 0.5 rad still results in an excellent value for
the FOM of over 95%. This means that even at a high absolute B-Integral of ~10 rad, i.e. in a
highly nonlinear regime, a good FOM can still be realistically reached. However, the
dispersion term in the equation has a fourth order dependency on the bandwidth. Hence, with
broad bandwidths the match of the LDE in the channels becomes critical.
Influences of fluctuations of the input power and amplification coefficient
To calculate the impact that fluctuations of the input power and amplification factor have on
the FOM (only taking into account the resulting phase fluctuations because the influence of
the power fluctuations itself can be neglected), one has to derive an expression for the
corresponding change of the B-Integral. Assuming exponential amplification (unsaturated
case), the formula for the B-Integral is [13]:
8n2 L
B CP0 g 1 ln g with C
1
(15)
0 MFD 2 f rep
with the nonlinear coefficient n2, the propagation length L, the mode field diameter MFD, the
repetition rate frep, the pulse duration , the input average power P0 and the amplification
coefficient g. The change of the B-Integral depending on fluctuations of the input power and
amplification coefficient (P0, g) can then be approximated and a linear dependence on the
absolute value of the B-Integral is found:
B P B g
P0 B 0 and g B for g 1 (16)
P0 P0 g g
So while the FOM in Eq. (14) does not depend on the absolute value of B, for higher B-
Integrals a relative fluctuation of the input power or the amplification coefficient will result in
a larger change of the B-Integral and thus have a larger detrimental effect on the FOM.
Fig. 5. Dependency of the absolute change of the B-Integral and of the FOM on the value of
the B-Integral, if a fluctuation of the input power and amplification coefficient of 5% is
introduced.
This means that the sensitivity of a system will grow with higher B-Integrals, as shown in
Fig. 5. Hence, in a highly nonlinear regime, the stability of the amplifier input and output
powers play a major role in determining the achievable FOM. In this case, additional
stabilization of these factors might be required.
5. Figure of merit for more than two channels
So far, the presented formulas are limited to calculate the FOM for two channels. To calculate
the FOM for a larger number of channels, the combined intensity has to be calculated first.
This can be done in the same way for cascaded combining elements as if the combination
process is realized in one step [10]. It is assumed that the combining fractions of the beam
combining system are the same for every channel. Hence, the combined electric field for N
channels with the phases n() can be written as follows if equal intensities are assumed:
1 N s N
E
N
E e
n 1
0
i n
E0 0
N n 1
e i n
(17)
The spectral intensity profile of the combined beam can now be calculated:
s
N cos ij
N N
I ~ E * E E0 0
2
(18)
N i 1, i j j 1
with the spectral phase differences between two channels i,j(). Using Eq. (3), the FOM
can be calculated for the system:
I ( ) Ns I ( ) d C s 2-N 2N

cos d
N
FOM
Ns d
ij
N N
i 1, i j j 1
(19)
2 2 N N
1 2
N N
FOM ij
i 1, i j j 1
with the FOM for two channels FOMij. In reality, the FOM between two random channels
will result in approximately the same value FOM12, so the equation can be simplified further:
2 1
FOM 1 2 1 FOM12 (20)
N N
6. Conclusion
In conclusion, we have investigated how different temporal and spectral effects impact a
figure of merit introduced to characterize the coherent combination of two ultrashort pulses.
These effects include SPM, dispersion and OPDs between the pulses. It has been shown that
the detrimental effect of misalignments and fluctuations grow with increasing bandwidth of
the pulses and with increasing B-Integral. However, even in those cases, an excellent FOM of
> 90% should still be achievable with a carefully designed setup. This corresponds to a power
loss of < 5% when the definition of the FOM is considered. In these cases, spatial effects,
which were not considered in this paper, such as an imperfect overlap of the beams will have
a larger impact on the combining process and might be the main factor in determining the
viability of using the coherent combining approach. While the paper primarily deals with the
combination of only two pulses, it is shown how the figure of merit can be calculated for a
combining system with more than two channels.
Acknowledgements
This work has been partly supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and
Research (BMBF) and the European Research Council (ERC), SIRG 240460-PECS. A.K.
acknowledges financial support by the Helmholtz-Institute Jena. E.S. acknowledges financial
support by the Carl Zeiss Stiftung Germany.

Basic Considerations On Coherent Combining of Ultrashort Laser Pulses

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Basic Considerations On Coherent Combining of Ultrashort Laser Pulses

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Basic considerations on coherent combining of

ultrashort laser pulses

Abstract: Coherent combining is a novel approach to scale the performance

References and links

Pmax ( ) Pmin ( ) 2 P0 ( ) cos

FOM C s( ) FOM ( ) d C s( ) cos d (5)

The analytically calculated FOM depending on B and L is shown in Fig. 4. Different

You might also like