Abstract

A brightness- and power-scalable polarization beam-combining scheme for high-power, broad-area semiconductor laser diodes is investigated numerically and experimentally. To achieve the beam combining, we employ Lyot-filtered optical reinjection from an external cavity, which forces lasing of the individual diodes on interleaved frequency combs with overlapping envelopes and enables a high optical coupling efficiency. Unlike conventional spectral beam-combining schemes with diffraction gratings, the optical coupling efficiency is insensitive to thermal drifts of laser wavelengths. This scheme can be used for efficient coupling of a large number of laser diodes and paves the way toward using broad-area laser diode arrays for cost-efficient material processing, which requires high-brilliance emission and optical powers in the kW regime.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

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