Abstract

A new type of compound cavity is proposed to passively phase-lock an array of fiber lasers. The unidirectional ring type cavity includes a phase contrast filtering device. Refractive index nonlinearity due to gain saturation plays then a key role to compensate phase deviations in the output beam pattern. Simulations show that the scheme offers better combining efficiency than previously investigated architectures. Preliminary experiments with four lasers will be reported demonstrating the expected operation.

© 2012 Optical Society of America