Disclosure of Invention
The invention aims to overcome the technical defects and provide a system and a method for realizing coherent beam combination of a semiconductor laser array, so as to solve the problems in the prior art.
In order to achieve the technical aim, according to a first aspect of the invention, a system for realizing coherent beam combination of a semiconductor laser array is provided, and the system comprises a seed source, a collimating mirror, a beam expander, a first beam splitter, the semiconductor laser array, a fast and slow axis collimator, a phase algorithm controller, a beam combiner and a high-speed photoelectric detector which are sequentially arranged along a laser transmission direction.
Specifically, the seed source is used for emitting laser beams, and the collimating mirror is used for collimating the laser beams emitted by the seed source, so that the divergent laser beams are changed into parallel beams.
Specifically, the beam expander is used for increasing the diameter of the collimated laser beam;
After passing through a beam expander, the collimated laser beam is split into a plurality of sub-beams through a first beam splitter, and the sub-beams are coupled and input into a semiconductor laser array for optical signal amplification;
the semiconductor laser array adopts a mode of spatial linear arrangement of a plurality of light emitting units.
Specifically, the system further comprises a fast and slow axis coupling mirror, the fast and slow axis coupling mirror is arranged between the first beam splitter and the semiconductor laser array, and the plurality of sub-beams are injected into the semiconductor laser array for optical signal amplification through the fast and slow axis coupling mirror in a coupling mode.
Specifically, the system further comprises a fast and slow axis collimator which is arranged behind the semiconductor laser array and is used for collimating each sub-beam after the optical signal is amplified.
Specifically, the beam combiner is configured to combine the collimated sub-beams to generate a combined laser beam, where the beam combining method includes tiling aperture beam combining or filling aperture beam combining;
The system also comprises a conversion lens and a second beam splitter, wherein the conversion lens is arranged between the phase algorithm controller and the beam combiner, the second beam splitter is arranged between the beam combiner and the high-speed photoelectric detector, and the second beam splitter splits the combined laser beam and inputs the combined laser beam with a first preset proportion range to the high-speed photoelectric detector through the conversion lens.
Specifically, the high-speed photoelectric detector is used for detecting the received optical signal of the combined laser beam in the first preset proportion range, converting the optical signal into an electric signal, and feeding the electric signal back to the phase algorithm controller.
Specifically, the phase algorithm controller is used for carrying out active on-chip phase modulation on each sub-beam which is amplified by the semiconductor laser array and collimated by the fast and slow axis collimator according to the received electric signal fed back by the high-speed photoelectric detector.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of achieving coherent beam combining of a semiconductor laser array, comprising:
s100, collimating a laser beam emitted by a seed source through a collimating mirror, increasing the diameter of the laser beam through a beam expander, and dividing the laser beam into a plurality of sub-beams through a first beam splitter;
s200, respectively coupling a plurality of sub-beams into a semiconductor laser array through a fast-slow axis coupling mirror for optical signal amplification;
s300, collimating each amplified sub-beam by using a fast and slow axis coupling mirror, and generating a combined laser beam by the collimated sub-beams through a beam combiner;
S400, coupling the combined laser beams in the first preset proportion range into a high-speed photoelectric detector for optical signal detection, and converting the optical signals into electric signals;
s500, feeding the electric signal back to a phase algorithm controller to carry out phase modulation on the active chip.
Specifically, the generating, by the beam combiner, the combined laser beam from each collimated sub-beam includes:
And generating a combined laser beam by using a beam combiner to combine the collimated sub-beams through a tiled aperture or filling aperture.
The beneficial effects are that:
The invention uses the phase algorithm controller to carry out the phase modulation on the active sheet, and realizes the phase locking between array units by directly regulating and controlling the electric signals loaded on the semiconductor laser array, so that the combined laser beams form stable constructive interference, the brightness of the combined laser beams is greatly improved, no extra optical element is needed, the invention has higher integration characteristic, has advantages in the aspects of the number and miniaturization of the combined laser units, can obtain the semiconductor laser coherent light source with simple and compact structure, is more beneficial to the realization of the semiconductor laser integrated light source with small volume and high brightness, and provides a new path for the coherent synthesis of the semiconductor laser.
Detailed Description
In order to make the technical solution of the present application better understood by those skilled in the art, the technical solution of the present application will be clearly and completely described in the following with reference to the accompanying drawings, and based on the embodiments of the present application, other similar embodiments obtained by those skilled in the art without making any inventive effort should be included in the scope of protection of the present application. In addition, directional words such as "upper", "lower", "left", "right", and the like, as used in the following embodiments are merely directions with reference to the drawings, and thus, the directional words used are intended to illustrate, not to limit, the application.
The invention will be further described with reference to the drawings and preferred embodiments.
Referring to fig. 1-8, the present embodiment provides a system for implementing coherent beam combination of a semiconductor laser array, which includes a seed source 1, a collimator lens 2, a beam expander 3, a first beam splitter 4, a semiconductor laser array 6, a fast and slow axis collimator 7, a phase algorithm controller 8, a beam combiner 12, and a high-speed photodetector 9 sequentially arranged along a laser transmission direction.
Further, the main operation flow of the system for implementing coherent beam combination of the semiconductor laser array in this embodiment includes that the collimated seed source 1 is divided into a plurality of sub-beams by the first beam splitter 4, each sub-beam is respectively coupled and injected into the semiconductor laser array 6 to obtain coherent array beams, phase mismatch is caused by heat and sound noise, that is, Δψ is not equal to 0, and phase algorithm controller 8 is utilized to perform active on-chip phase modulation to ensure efficient phase locking between parallel MOPA array unit laser beams to form stable coherent beam combination, so as to improve brightness of output laser beams.
Specifically, the seed source 1 is configured to emit a laser beam, and the collimator 2 is configured to collimate the laser beam emitted by the seed source 1, so that the divergent laser beam is changed into a parallel beam.
In some specific embodiments, the seed source 1 should have a narrower linewidth, lower intensity noise and phase noise, and the seed sources selected include, but are not limited to, DFB semiconductor laser seed sources, DBR semiconductor laser seed sources, and fiber laser seed sources.
Specifically, the beam expander 3 is configured to increase the diameter of the collimated laser beam;
After passing through the beam expander 3, the collimated laser beam is split into a plurality of sub-beams through the first beam splitter 4, and the sub-beams are coupled and input into the semiconductor laser array 6 for optical signal amplification;
The semiconductor laser array 6 adopts a spatial linear arrangement of a plurality of light emitting units.
In some specific embodiments, the seed source 1 is expanded by the beam expander 3, and then is split into a plurality of sub-beams by the beam splitter to be coupled and injected into the corresponding semiconductor laser single array 6 for amplification, the wavefront of the laser beam can be directly split into a plurality of tiny partial couplings by the micro-lens array to be injected into the semiconductor laser, the beam splitter can also be selected, and the beam splitter can select an optical fiber beam splitter, a Diffraction Optical Element (DOE) and the like, and the semiconductor laser array 6 for coherent beam combination is a spatial linear array of a plurality of light emitting units, including but not limited to a standard CM bar, mini bar, or a linear array or a stacked array of single SOA and SOA-bar in space.
Specifically, the system further comprises a fast and slow axis coupling mirror 5, the fast and slow axis coupling mirror 5 is arranged between the first beam splitter 4 and the semiconductor laser array 6, and the plurality of sub-beams are injected into the semiconductor laser array 6 for optical signal amplification through the fast and slow axis coupling mirror 5 in a coupling mode.
It should be further noted that, to eliminate the effect of parasitic resonance on phase locking, the front and back cavities of the semiconductor laser unit or array for beam combination need to be subjected to anti-reflection treatment, so that the reflectivity of the front and back cavity surfaces is less than 0.1%, and the front and back cavity anti-reflection semiconductor laser unit or array can be equivalently regarded as a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) unit or array.
Specifically, the system further includes a fast and slow axis collimator 7, where the fast and slow axis collimator 7 is disposed behind the semiconductor laser array 6 and is used for collimating each sub-beam after amplifying the optical signal.
Specifically, the beam combiner 12 is configured to combine the collimated sub-beams to generate a combined laser beam, where the beam combining method includes tiling aperture beam combining or filling aperture beam combining;
The system further comprises a conversion lens 10 and a second beam splitter 16, wherein the conversion lens 10 is arranged between the phase algorithm controller 8 and the beam combiner 12, the second beam splitter 16 is arranged between the beam combiner and the high-speed photoelectric detector 9, the second beam splitter 16 splits the combined laser beam, and the combined laser beam in the first preset proportion range is input to the high-speed photoelectric detector 9 through the conversion lens 10.
Specifically, the high-speed photodetector 9 is configured to detect a received optical signal of the combined laser beam within a first preset ratio range, convert the optical signal into an electrical signal, and feed back the electrical signal to the phase algorithm controller 8.
Specifically, the phase algorithm controller 8 is configured to perform active on-chip phase modulation on each sub-beam after being amplified by the semiconductor laser array 6 and collimated by the fast-slow axis collimator 7 according to the received electrical signal fed back by the high-speed photodetector 9.
It can be understood that the phase control is to compensate the phase jitter between the beam combining units by using phase detection and controlling the load current of the beam combining units, the selected phase algorithm controller 8 can include an analog-to-digital conversion module (ADC), a digital-to-analog conversion module (DAC), a voltage-to-current module, a high-speed acquisition card, an FPGA logic signal processing circuit, etc., the phase algorithm controller 8 should have the characteristics of less iterative steps of the algorithm, fast convergence speed, higher control bandwidth, etc., the phase control algorithm can select various phase control methods such as random parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm, homodyne interferometry algorithm, multi-jitter algorithm, interference fringe extraction algorithm, artificial intelligence algorithm, etc., and the phase algorithm controller 8 can quickly adjust the phase modulator of the beam combining unit according to the signal of the high-speed photodetector 9 to achieve the characteristics of coherent phase-locked output, and the high-speed photodetector 9 has high bandwidth, fast response time, and better NEP (noise equivalent power) performance.
Referring to fig. 1 to 10, the working principle of the present embodiment is described below by way of specific examples:
The collimated seed source 1 is divided into a plurality of sub-beams with equal intensity after passing through a beam expander 3 and a first beam splitter 4, each sub-beam is injected into a semiconductor laser array 6 through a fast and slow axis coupling mirror 5 to properly amplify the power of a laser beam, and the seed source 1 and the semiconductor laser array 6 form a main oscillation amplification (MOPA) array unit with high coherence and then output through a fast and slow axis collimator 7;
The output array parallel beams pass through the first beam splitter 4, most of light is output by aperture-splitting coherent beam combination or common aperture coherent beam combination according to different system aperture filling implementation modes, and a small part of light enters the high-speed photoelectric detector 9 after passing through the conversion lens 10, so that effective detection of phases among beam combination units is realized, then the effective detection is fed back to the phase algorithm controller 8, and the phase lock is realized by accurately controlling the phase between the output beams of the array units by regulating and controlling current changes loaded on the semiconductor laser array by using an on-chip phase modulation technology, so that the combined laser beams form stable constructive interference, and the brightness of the combined laser is improved.
FIGS. 2-8 are diagrams of coherent combining beams based on-chip phase modulation methods to achieve different optical structures;
it can be appreciated that compared with the phase modulation method using an additional photoelectric device, the phase modulation method provided by the invention has good integration characteristics, has advantages in the aspects of the number of beam combining units and miniaturization, and can obtain a semiconductor laser coherent light source with simple and compact structure.
The phase algorithm controller is used for carrying out the phase modulation on the active plate, and the phase lock between the array units is realized by directly regulating and controlling the electric signals loaded on the semiconductor laser array, so that the combined laser beams form stable constructive interference, the brightness of the combined laser is greatly improved, no additional optical element is needed, the integrated phase modulation device has higher integration characteristics, the integrated phase modulation device has the advantages in the aspects of the number and miniaturization of the combined laser units, the semiconductor laser coherent light source with simple and compact structure can be obtained, the realization of the semiconductor laser integrated light source with small volume and high brightness is facilitated, and a new path is provided for the coherent synthesis of the semiconductor laser.
Referring to fig. 10, the present embodiment provides a method for implementing coherent beam combination of a semiconductor laser array, the method including:
s100, the laser beam emitted by the seed source 1 is collimated by the collimating mirror 2, the diameter of the laser beam is increased by the beam expander 3, and then the laser beam is divided into a plurality of sub-beams by the first beam splitter 4;
s200, respectively coupling a plurality of sub-beams into a semiconductor laser array 6 through a fast and slow axis coupling mirror 5 for optical signal amplification;
S300, collimating each amplified sub-beam by using a fast and slow axis coupling mirror 5, and generating a combined laser beam by the collimated sub-beams through a beam combiner 12;
s400, coupling the combined laser beams in the first preset proportion range into a high-speed photoelectric detector 9 for optical signal detection, and converting the optical signals into electric signals;
S500, feeding the electric signal back to the phase algorithm controller 8 to perform active on-chip phase modulation.
Specifically, the generating, by the beam combiner 12, the combined laser beam from the collimated sub-beams includes:
The collimated sub-beams are combined by a tiled aperture or a fill aperture by a combiner 12 to generate a combined laser beam.
Referring to fig. 2-5, in some specific embodiments, the phase-locked array unit may implement beam combination of the tiled aperture (Tiled Aperture) and the fill aperture (Filled Aperture), and may implement high-efficiency and high-beam quality coherent beam combination by using the beam combiner 12, as shown in fig. 6-7, where the selected beam combiner 12 includes, but is not limited to, a dammann grating, a polarization grating, a super-surface and other Diffractive Optical Elements (DOE), and the first preset ratio range is set to 0.01-1%, and 0.01-1% of the combined laser beam is fed back to the high-speed photodetector 9 to perform phase detection and compensation, and the selected second beam splitter 16 includes, but is not limited to, a flat-panel beam splitter and a diffractive beam splitter (beam sampling DOE).
Referring to fig. 10, the working principle of the present embodiment is described below by way of a specific example:
The embodiment provides a method for realizing coherent beam combination of a semiconductor laser array aiming at the current situations of complex structure and low integration level of the conventional semiconductor laser coherent combining system, and the method for realizing coherent phase locking among array units, which comprises the following specific steps:
(1) After beam expansion is carried out on the seed source 1 through the beam expander 3, the seed source 1 is divided into a plurality of sub beams which are respectively coupled and injected into the semiconductor laser array 6 for amplification, and the seed source 1 and the semiconductor laser array 6 form a main oscillation amplification (MOPA) array unit with high coherence;
(2) Packaging the semiconductor laser array 6 units on a heat sink to form a linear array or a stacked array and the like, and collimating the fast axis and the slow axis of the amplified laser beam by using a fast-slow axis collimator 7;
(3) Coupling 0.01-1% of the combined laser beams into a high-speed photoelectric detector 9 by using a second beam splitter 16 for optical signal detection, feeding back detection signals to a phase algorithm controller 8, and regulating and controlling current changes loaded on a semiconductor laser by an on-chip phase modulation technology to compensate phase differences among the output beams of the array unit so that the combined laser beams form stable constructive interference;
(4) The laser beam array unit after collimation can realize tiling aperture beam combination and filling aperture beam combination.
In the above process, the semiconductor laser in the steps (1) and (2) includes but is not limited to standard CM bars, mini bars, or linear arrays and stacked arrays formed by spatially arranging emutter and bars, and in order to eliminate the influence of parasitic resonance effect on phase locking, the front and rear cavities of the semiconductor laser unit or array for beam combination need to be subjected to anti-reflection treatment, so that the reflectivity of the front and rear cavity surfaces is less than 0.1%, and the output spectrum range can be selected according to the use requirement.
In the above process, in step (1), the seed source 1 needs to be coupled and injected into the corresponding semiconductor laser array 6 for amplification, and the expanded laser beam may be directly coupled and injected into the semiconductor laser array 6 through the microlens array, or components such as an optical fiber beam splitter, a DOE beam splitter, etc. may be selected for beam splitting and coupling injection of the seed source.
In the above process, the semiconductor laser array unit in step (2) is packaged on the heat sink, and the respective power-up requirements of the array unit need to be satisfied.
In the above process, the semiconductor laser chip adopted in the on-chip phase modulation technology in the step (3) has a phase modulation function, the phase modulation range of which is more than pi, the high-speed photoelectric detector 9 has the characteristics of direct current coupling output with high bandwidth, fast response time and better NEP (noise equivalent power) performance, the phase algorithm controller 8 has the characteristics of less algorithm iteration steps, fast convergence speed, higher control bandwidth and the like, and the beam splitting sampling ratio is selected according to the response parameters of the photoelectric detector.
In the above process, in step (4), if a filling aperture beam combining mode is selected, the beam combiner 12 may be used to achieve common aperture beam combining, and if a tiled aperture beam combining mode is selected, the filling factor of the whole array unit needs to be improved as much as possible, so that a certain beam shaping is required to be performed after the semiconductor laser array unit is amplified and collimated, and the improvement of the filling factor can make the tiled aperture beam combined more compact in space and more uniform in energy distribution, which is very critical to application scenarios requiring large-area uniform illumination or requiring improvement of beam coupling efficiency.
As shown in fig. 9, fig. 9 shows the stability of output power under the condition of no phase control, that is, the condition of an output signal (an optical signal is converted into an electrical signal) for detecting split light before beam combination (open loop) and after combination (closed loop), as can be seen from fig. 9, a coherent light beam is output after the closed loop, and the combined light beam is stable, which further proves that the invention can enable the combined laser beams to form stable constructive interference, and greatly improve the brightness of the combined laser beams.
The phase algorithm controller is used for carrying out the phase modulation on the active plate, and the phase lock between the array units is realized by directly regulating and controlling the electric signals loaded on the semiconductor laser array, so that the combined laser beams form stable constructive interference, the brightness of the combined laser is greatly improved, no additional optical element is needed, the integrated phase modulation device has higher integration characteristics, the integrated phase modulation device has the advantages in the aspects of the number and miniaturization of the combined laser units, the semiconductor laser coherent light source with simple and compact structure can be obtained, the realization of the semiconductor laser integrated light source with small volume and high brightness is facilitated, and a new path is provided for the coherent synthesis of the semiconductor laser.
It should be noted that the terms "first," "second," and the like in the description and the claims of the present application and the above figures are used for distinguishing between similar objects and not necessarily for describing a particular sequential or chronological order. It is to be understood that the data so used may be interchanged where appropriate such that the embodiments of the application described herein may be implemented in sequences other than those illustrated or otherwise described herein. Furthermore, the terms "comprises," "comprising," and "having," and any variations thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, system, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of steps or elements is not necessarily limited to those steps or elements expressly listed but may include other steps or elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus.
The technical features described above may be arbitrarily combined. Although not all possible combinations of features are described, any combination of features should be considered to be covered by the description provided that such combinations are not inconsistent.
The above-described embodiments of the present invention do not limit the scope of the present invention. Any other corresponding changes and modifications made in accordance with the technical idea of the present invention shall be included in the scope of the claims of the present invention.