Optics Communications 282 (2009) 25602563

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Optics Communications
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom

Beam combining of lasers with high spectral density using

volume Bragg gratings
Oleksiy Andrusyak a,*, Vadim Smirnov b, George Venus a, Leonid Glebov a
a
CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd., Orlando, FL 32816-2700, USA
b
OptiGrate, 3267 Progress Drive, Orlando, FL 32826, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Incoherent combining of multiple laser beams with offset wavelengths into a single near-diffraction-lim-
Received 9 February 2009 ited beam is an effective solution to increasing energy brightness and scaling output power of high-power
Received in revised form 2 March 2009 lasers. Volume Bragg gratings (VBGs) recorded in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass allow spectral
Accepted 7 March 2009
beam combining with a remarkably high spectral density of channels. Spectral beam combining (SBC)
of ve channels within 12 nm bandwidth around 1064 and 1550 nm into a single near-diffraction-lim-
ited beam with absolute efciency 9294% is demonstrated. Scaling of this technique to multi-kW power
Keywords:
level is discussed.
Laser beam combining
Volume holographic gratings
2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Photorefractive materials

1. Introduction tral beam combining is an incoherent combining technique that

Beam combining techniques have become an important tool in
the design of high-power high-brightness laser systems [1]. Maxi-
mum power that can be obtained from single high-power ampli-
ers is usually limited by thermal distortion of active medium and
beam quality degradation in solid-state lasers or non-linear effects
and optical damage in ber lasers. Beam combining offers an alter-
native solution to obtaining high-power high-brightness radiation.
Output beams of an array of lower-power laser sources operating
at moderate power can be combined by external optical elements,
producing a single beam with increased power and brightness.
Assuming that combining elements have high energy throughput
and introduce no signicant beam distortion, the brightness of
the combined beam is increased proportionally to the number of
channels.
Two approaches to brightness scaling using beam combining
have been considered coherent and incoherent (spectral). A com-
parative review of various coherent and spectral beam combining
techniques is presented in [1]. The main challenge for coherent
beam combining is precise control of wavelengths and relative
phases of gain elements. Coherent combining has been demon-
strated for a small number of elements at low power levels, but
scaling to high-power large-channel-count systems faces a number
of problems. Relative phase noise between channels is a major
challenge for coherent beam combining regardless of whether an
active or passive phase control method is implemented [2]. Spec-
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: oandrusy@creol.ucf.edu (O. Andrusyak).
does not require phase control of sources, allowing for a stable
and robust system. Using this method, beams from an array of la-
sers with each element operated at a different wavelength are
combined into a single near-diffraction-limited beam using disper-
sive optical elements. As a result, the energy brightness of the com-
bined beam is increased compared to individual sources, while
spectral brightness is decreased, since combined beam spectrum
consists of multiple peaks corresponding to individual sources.
Efcient SBC with power in combined beam on the level of a few
hundred Watts and channel separation of several nanometers has
been demonstrated using transmitting volume Bragg gratings [3]
and multilayer dielectric surface gratings [4,5]. Both approaches
offer power scalability; however, the total number of channels is
limited by the ratio of available gain medium bandwidth and min-
imum spectral separation of channels.
The total bandwidth available for SBC is typically determined by
the gain bandwidth of laser medium and application requirements.
For example, consider a laser system operating within a 50 nm
low-altitude atmosphere transparency window around 1040 nm.
With 500 W of power per channel, 100-kW-level near-diffrac-
tion-limited output can be achieved by combining 200 channels
with channel separation of 0.25 nm. In order to achieve small spec-
tral separation of channels using surface gratings, large source-to-
grating distances are required to spatially overlap beams from dif-
ferent channels, making the system impractically long. In case of
transmitting VBGs, thick gratings with large Bragg angles are re-
quired, resulting in narrow angular acceptance. Reecting VBGs
used at near-normal incidence are much more advantageous for
high-density SBC (2 channels/nm and higher) due to wide angular

0030-4018/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.optcom.2009.03.019
 O. Andrusyak et al. / Optics Communications 282 (2009) 25602563
acceptance and the small source-to-grating distances required [6].
Besides higher tolerance to beam divergence, reecting VBGs are
polarization-insensitive and are suitable for SBC of unpolarized la-
sers. A compact and rugged high spectral density beam-combining
system can be constructed using reecting VBGs. In this paper we
discuss basic properties of reecting VBGs recorded in PTR glass
and present experimental results of 5-channel SBC with high spec-
tral density (0.250.5 nm channel separation) around 1064 and
1550 nm.
2. Volume Bragg gratings in PTR glass for spectral beam
combining
High-efciency VBG recording in PTR glass has been developed
[7]. While being photo-sensitive in the UV, PTR glass offers high
transmittance in the near-IR and visible parts of spectrum with
absorption comparable to the best available commercial optical
glasses. Moreover, PTR glass has excellent thermo-mechanical
properties with refractive index practically independent of tem-
perature (dn/dT  107 K1). These features enable VBGs in PTR
glass to withstand high-power laser radiation, making them ideal
elements for high-power SBC. As an example, two Yb-ber lasers
with 11 nm difference in central wavelengths have been combined
with 92% efciency using a transmitting VBG to produce a single
near-diffraction-limited beam with 165 W of power [3]. The
behavior of narrow-band reecting VBGs in PTR glass under
high-power radiation has been studied [6,8]. It was found that dif-
fraction efciency and spectral bandwidth of gratings are not chan-
ged under laser irradiation with power up to 570 W and no
residual phenomena were revealed in gratings irradiated by a fo-
cused laser beam with power density up to 5 kW/cm2.
There is a principal difference between SBC by means of surface
grating or prisms and volume gratings. The use of prisms and sur-
face gratings is based on their angular dispersion which provides
dependence of deection angle on wavelength. From one side, high
angular dispersion is required to provide spatial separation of laser
sources with close wavelengths. From another side, this dispersion
induces additional divergence of a deected beam according to its
spectral width [9]. SBC by means of volume Bragg gratings utilizes
unique spectral response of VBGs: diffraction efciency is close to
unity when the Bragg condition is satised and is close to zero at
multiple points corresponding to particular wavelength offsets
from the Bragg condition. Two beams with shifted wavelengths
incident on a grating at conjugate angles emerge overlapped and
collinear (Fig. 1) if the wavelength of one (k1) matches the Bragg
condition (the beam is diffracted) and the wavelength of the other
(k2) is offset to match one of the zeros (the beam is transmitted).
Angular dispersion of volume Bragg gratings is signicant only if
deection angle is far from zero or 180. It contributes to the diver-
gence of beams deected by high-spatial-frequency transmitting
VBGs [10], but is insignicant for reecting VBGs used at angles
close to normal [6].
Properties of reecting and transmitting VBGs have been de-
scribed in great detail [1113]. In this paper we will focus on spec-
tral properties of narrow-band reecting VBGs used for high-
spectral-density SBC. For a plane wave incident on an un-slanted
1+ 2
1= Bragg 2= Bragg
Fig. 1. Spectral beam combining of two beams with offset wavelengths using a
reecting volume Bragg grating.
2561
reecting Bragg grating (grating vector parallel to the front surface
normal) with sinusoidal variation of refractive index, diffraction
efciency can be expressed through basic grating parameters [13]:
0 11
 2
k0 f 2 Dk
B 1 C
gDk B C
2nav dn
B1  2  2 1=2 C ; 1
@ 2
A
sinh 2pnav tdn
k20 f
 pftk0Dk
where t is grating thickness, nav is average refractive index of the
medium, dn is amplitude of refractive index modulation, and f is
spatial frequency of the grating. The plane wave is incident on the
grating at an angle that satises the Bragg condition for a wave-
length k0, and Dk represents spectral offset from k0. Maximum dif-
fraction efciency g0 that occurs at the Bragg condition can be
obtained by setting Dk = 0 in Eq. (1):
2pnav tdn
g0 tanh2 : 2
k20 f
Spectral dependence of diffraction efciency of a narrow-band un-
slanted reecting VBG used for SBC is shown in Fig. 2. Bragg condi-
tion of this grating is satised for k0 = 1064.0 nm when angle of inci-
dence is 3.8 relative to the front surface normal. For a plane wave
model, diffraction efciency has a peak at k0, where diffraction ef-
ciency is determined by Eq. (2) and a series of points at multiple
wavelengths where diffraction efciency is zero. Efcient spectral
beam combining in a geometry illustrated in Fig. 1 is performed
by matching k1 to the Bragg wavelength of the grating (k0) and k2
to one of the zeros.
Diffraction efciency, spectral selectivity and angular accep-
tance of gratings are determined by grating thickness and refrac-
tive index modulation. Following the hyperbolic tangent function
of Eq. (2), diffraction efciency g0 asymptotically approaches the
100% value as grating thickness and/or refractive index modulation
are increased. However diffraction efciency close to 100% may be
undesirable for SBC of real (divergent) beams, since it also leads to
an increase in diffraction efciency for wavelengths offset from
Bragg condition. For beams with nite divergence, diffraction ef-
ciency can be calculated as a convolution of the angular efciency
of the grating and beam intensity in the angular space [13]. While
peak diffraction efciency is not changed for beams with diver-
gence much smaller than angular acceptance of a grating, sharp
minima of diffraction efciency curve can not be matched for of
the entire angular spectrum of a divergent beam. Therefore, dif-
fraction efciency in minima is not zero for a beam with nite
divergence (Fig. 2). As a result, the transmitted beam is partially
diffracted by the grating and efciency of combining is decreased.
An effective solution to minimizing these losses is to place neigh-
boring channels into higher-order minima of spectral selectivity
100
Plane wave
Diffraction efficiency, %
80 0.6 mrad beam
Experiment
60
40
20
0
1063.4 1063.6 1063.8 1064.0 1064.2 1064.4 1064.6
Wavelength, nm
Fig. 2. Spectral selectivity of a reecting VBG used for SBC with 0.43 nm channel
spacing around 1064 nm.
2562 O. Andrusyak et al. / Optics Communications 282 (2009) 25602563

Table 1
Parameters of gratings optimized for SBC experiments.

5-Channel SBC system Parameters of beam-combining gratings

Wavelength/channel separation Absolute system efciency (experiment) Bragg wavelength at normal incidence Thickness Refractive index modulation
(nm) (%) (nm) (mm) (ppm)
1064/0.43 93.7 1065.1 3.7 420
1550/0.51 92.6 1552.8 6.5 200
1550/0.25 91.7 1550.1 10.3 140

curve. Using an optimization procedure, gratings that simulta-
neously provide high efciency for diffracted beams and low losses
for transmitted beams can be designed for given channel separa-
tion and beam divergence. As an example, grating with spectral
selectivity shown in Fig. 2 is optimized for high-efciency SBC with
0.43 nm channel separation. This grating provides diffraction ef-
ciency of 99.7% at Bragg condition and diffraction losses <1% for
a beam with divergence 0.6 mrad and wavelength offset by
0.43 nm, corresponding to the 4th minimum.
3. Experimental results
Three SBC systems with varying spectral separation of channels
have been designed and assembled. Each system spectrally com-
bines ve beams with offset wavelengths into a single near-diffrac-
tion-limited beam by a stack of reecting VBGs. Parameters of
gratings used and absolute efciency of 5-channel SBC systems
achieved experimentally are summarized in Table 1.
The optical setup is shown in Fig. 3 for a set of VBGs having the
same period. Gratings are angle-tuned to diffract beams of respec-
tive wavelengths, while beams with other wavelengths are trans-
mitted undisturbed.
Commercially available narrow-line ber-pigtailed diode lasers
terminated by high-quality adjustable collimators are used in the
experiments, producing near-diffraction-limited (M2 < 1.1) beams
with 3 mm diameter (FWe2M). Proper collimation is achieved
by using a wedge-plate shearing interferometer [14] and by mini-
mizing beam spot size in a focal plane of a focusing lens. Angular
divergence of beams is 0.5 mrad and 0.7 mrad (FWe2M) for
1064 and 1550 nm cases respectively. Output power of each laser
is set to 5 mW. Absolute system efciency (Table 1) is calculated
by dividing the power of the combined output beam by 25 mW,
which is the total power of the ve input beams. Central wave-
lengths of lasers were tuned to required separation (0.43 nm
around 1064 nm, 0.5 and 0.25 nm around 1550 nm) by adjusting
the angle of an intra-cavity surface grating (1064 nm) and control-
ling the DFB laser diode temperature (1550 nm). The output of
each 5-channel SBC system is a spectrally-combined beam with to-
tal bandwidth of 1.7 nm (around 1064 nm), 2 nm and 1 nm
(around 1550 nm). Spectra of output beams of the three SBC sys-
tems are shown in Fig. 4, where individual linewidths are limited
by the resolution of an optical spectrum analyzer.
Alignment of SBC systems is performed by using an alignment
collimator pointing in a reverse direction that denes the axis of

Fig. 3. Spectral beam combining of ve laser sources using a stack of identical reecting volume Bragg gratings.

6 6 6
Power, mW
Power, mW

Power, mW

4 4 4

2 2 2

0 0 0
1062 1063 1064 1547 1548 1549 1550 1547.5 1548 1548.5
Wavelength, nm Wavelength, nm Wavelength, nm
Fig. 4. Output spectra of three SBC systems.

100 100 120

Beam width, m

Beam width, m
Beam width, m

80 M2=1.11 80 M2=1.12 100 M2=1.13

60 60 80
60
40 40 40
20 20 20
0 0 0
-1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5
Position, mm Position, mm Position, mm

Fig. 5. Spectrally combined output beams from three SBC systems around the focal plane of a test lens: 0.43 nm channel separation around 1064 nm (left), 0.51 nm channel
separation around 1550 nm (center) and 0.25 nm channel separation around 1550 nm (right).
 O. Andrusyak et al. / Optics Communications 282 (2009) 25602563
the output beam. The channels are aligned sequentially, starting
with one that is closer to the output and ending with one that is
transmitted through all gratings. Laser source of a respective chan-
nel is coupled to the alignment collimator and a VBG correspond-
ing to that channel is aligned to satisfy Bragg condition for that
wavelength (the beam is diffracted with highest efciency). Next,
a working collimator is placed in a location where the alignment
beam is diffracted to and laser output is switched to the working
collimator. The working collimator is aligned to couple light dif-
fracted by the VBG into the alignment collimator with maximum
efciency. As this procedure is repeated to align the next channel,
the beam is transmitted through VBGs of previous channels due to
an offset wavelength. After all channels are aligned, output beams
from all channels are overlapped and collinear, resulting in a near-
diffraction-limited spectrally-combined beam. This method allows
alignment with accuracy better than 20 lrad.
Times-diffraction-limit factors (commonly known as M2) of
spectrally-combined output beams are measured by focusing
beams with a test lens [15]. Slit-based beam proler is used to scan
beams in ve planes along the direction of propagation. Beam
widths calculated by second moment denition are t to a hyper-
bolic equation to nd M2 of the beams (Fig. 5).
Spectrally-combined output beams from three SBC systems are
near-diffraction-limited with roughly the same M2 as input beams.
This indicates that accuracy of alignment is much better than
divergence of beams and combining elements do not introduce
beam distortions. Brightness of output beams is enhanced by 5
times compared to individual input beams.
This approach can be scaled to high power by increasing the
channel count and power per channel. Low absorption in visible
and near-IR regions of spectrum and excellent thermo-mechanical
properties of PTR glass allow it to withstand high-power radiation.
Recently, ve randomly polarized ber lasers with 0.5 nm channel
separation around 1064 nm were combined using this technique
with 91.7% combining efciency, resulting in 773 W output power
in a combined beam [16,17]. It was shown that at this power level
VBGs introduce no signicant beam distortions. SBC of high-power
lasers with small spectral separation of channels provides a clear
path to obtaining near-diffraction-limited spectrally-combined
beams with multi-kW power levels.
4. Conclusions
Reecting volume Bragg gratings in PTR glass enable high-ef-
ciency combining of multiple laser beams with high spectral den-
2563
sity. Three systems that combine ve beams with channel
separation 0.250.5 nm around 1064 and 1550 nm with absolute
efciency 9294% are demonstrated. Output of each system is a
spectrally-combined near-diffraction-limited beam with enhanced
brightness. Optical and thermo-mechanical properties of volume
gratings allow scaling of such systems to multi-kW power levels.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by DARPA/ADHELS (contract H0011-06-
1-0010) and HEL-JTO (contract FA9451-06-D-0015) programs.
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