Optics and Laser Technology 105 (2018) 281–287

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Optics and Laser Technology

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Theoretical analysis of beam quality degradation in spectral beam

combining of fiber laser array with beam deviation
Gang Bai a,b, Hui Shen a, Yifeng Yang a,⇑, Xiang Zhao a,b, Jingpu Zhang a,b, Haibo Zhang a, Yunfeng Qi a,⇑⇑,
Bing He a,c,⇑⇑⇑, Jun Zhou a,d
a
Shanghai Key Laboratory of All Solid-State Laser and Applied Techniques, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China
b
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
c
Nanjing Institute of Advanced Laser Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210038, China
d
Nanjing Zhongke Shenguang Technology Co., Ltd, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210038, China

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

Article history: Aimed to maintain excellent beam quality, the degradation of M2 factor is theoretically studied in com-
Received 9 October 2017 pact spectral beam combining (SBC) system of fiber laser array. Considering that the output beams from a
Received in revised form 18 January 2018 laser array usually have axial translation and angular deflection, the correction of incident light field is
Accepted 12 March 2018
built by the transformation of coordinates. Using the propagation model and the statistics, properties
of the combined beam with perturbations of a single emitter or entire laser array are respectively dis-
cussed in detail. The degradation of M2 factor is 0:14ð0:075Þ when the axial translation of entire laser
Keywords:
array satisfies normal distribution with standard deviation of 100 lm. While the angular deflection is
Spectral beam combining
Fiber laser array
introduced with standard deviation of 10/3 mrad, the degradation increases to 3:57ð1:28Þ. Owing to
Beam deviation non-overlap ensemble of the incident beam on the grating, the deflection angle will translate the far-
Beam quality field beam spot after the diffraction, which causes a dramatic degradation of the beam quality.
Considering the axial translation and the angular deflection simultaneously, the overall effect on the
beam quality is dominated by the angular deflection. For applicable requirements of M2 < 2, 3 mrad angu-
lar deflection is claimed with axial translation less than 300 lm in the compact SBC system. These anal-
yses provide a valid basis for building the experimental system of SBC.
Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction uration, achieving a SBC of 11-channel, wideband diode array,

obtaining 20 times diffraction limit output [4]. This technique is
High-brightness beam combining of fiber lasers provides a path also widely used in the fiber laser to increase laser brightness.
for power scaling beyond the single fiber limit while maintaining The combined output power of SBC increases from 522 W to 8.2
many of the benefits of fiber lasers. Compared with coherent com- kW with the beam quality degradation from 1.22 to 4.3 [5,6]. With
bining, incoherent spectral beam combining (SBC) have the advan- the expansion of the laser array scale, Lockheed Martin Inc. has
tages of permitting independent modulation of the lasers, not achieved a breakthrough in the total power of SBC from 3 kW to
requiring phase control and interferometric alignment tolerances 30 kW with a beam quality of M 2x ¼ 1:6 and M 2y ¼ 1:8 [7,8].
[1–3]. Beams with diverse wavelength in SBC are overlapped in The output power of SBC is determined by the number of emit-
both the near and far fields to achieve high concentration of power ters and power of a single laser, while the beam quality of the com-
with near-diffraction limited output beam. In 2000, Daneu et al. bined beam is theoretically identical to that of the individual beam
proposed the SBC of a laser array in the external resonator config- from a single emitter. However, the beam quality is susceptible to
the thermal distortion of diffraction grating, the optical aberration
of transform lens, and beam deviation of laser arrays. According to
⇑ Corresponding author. a propagation model based on multilayer dielectric gratings
⇑⇑ Corresponding author. (MDGs) [9–12], the combined beam quality degrades with the
⇑⇑⇑ Corresponding author at: Shanghai Key Laboratory of All Solid-State Laser and
parameters and fabrication errors of MDGs [9,10] and aberration
Applied Techniques, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China. coefficient of the transform lens [11]. In these analyses, an ideal
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (Y. Yang), [email protected] (Y. Qi), laser array is assumed, but the beam deviation of misaligned laser
[email protected] (B. He). array also influences the properties of the combined beam,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2018.03.010
0030-3992/Ó 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
282 G. Bai et al. / Optics and Laser Technology 105 (2018) 281–287

especially the beam quality, which has been a key performance external disturbances that surround emitters, such as fabrication
index for evaluating the effect of the high-energy laser. For the errors, mechanical vibration and temperature change. The paper
wideband diode array, the non-ideal ‘‘smile” effect on the com- is organized as follows. In Section 2, the incident light fields of
bined beam quality has been investigated using the ray-tracing beams with axial translation and angular deflection are derived
method [12]. However, due to the different divergence angles in by the transformation of coordinates and pass through the com-
two orthogonal directions, diode laser arrays of SBC require com- pact SBC system based on the beam propagation model. The inten-
plex beam shaping system with the output field of super- sity distributions and M2 factor of the combined diffraction beams
Gaussian distribution. The order of the super-Gaussian is hard to are numerically calculated and analyzed in mathematical statistics
be determined precisely and the initial beam quality is unknown in Section 3. Conclusions are drawn in Section 4. We believe that
which reduces the usefulness and effectiveness of simulation. In this reliable analysis will play an important role in establishing
contrast, the fiber laser array where the emitters release nearly SBC system of fiber lasers in practice.
diffraction-limited Gaussian beams is more applicable to establish
SBC model for simulating and optimizing the beam quality. Most 2. Theoretical model
importantly, as the multiple beam combination with stochastic
beam deviation, a systematical statistical analysis is critical for A schematic diagram for SBC system is shown in Fig. 1(a), con-
evaluating the beam quality precisely. For the numerical calcula- sisting of fiber laser array, a transform lens, and a diffraction grat-
tion, compared with the ray-tracing method, the approach using ing. The transform lens is located between the laser array and MDG
rigorous coupled wave analysis is stricter to consider phase modu- to ensure that each individual beam is collimated and spatially
lation on the MDG in subwavelength structures (grating constant overlapped on the MDG. All beams with different wavelengths
d  k) [13]. To our best knowledge, the influence of beam deviation whose incident angles specially satisfy the grating equation can
on the fiber SBC architecture is rarely analyzed in previous reports. be exported along the common aperture. Therefore, the emission
In this paper, the combined beam quality of SBC has been cho- wavelength of each beam is determined by both the MDG and
sen as a universal standard to evaluate the changes caused by the position of laser emitter. Compared with free propagation of

Fig. 1. (a) Schematic illustration and (b) simplified mathematical model of SBC system. LL0 and KK 0 are equiphase surface for the different sub-beam; n, the numerical order of
the relief.

Fig. 2. Beam deviation of emitters including: (a) axial translation with dxm ; (b) angular deflection with dhm .
 G. Bai et al. / Optics and Laser Technology 105 (2018) 281–287 283

the laser array, the configuration ensures that the combined beam superposed incoherently after the grating. As shown in Fig. 1(b),
has superior beam quality and higher power. two Cartesian coordinate systems are established for the incident
and diffraction beams, respectively. In the incident coordinate
2.1. Beam propagation model of SBC system system, 2M þ 1 fiber lasers located in the focal plane of the lens
(x00 axis) are symmetrically arranged along the optical axis of the
The simulation for SBC is divided into the following steps: (i) lens (z00 axis). For the diffraction one, z axis is set along the com-
each individual beam emitted from the fiber laser array is con- bined diffraction beams, and the x axis on the observing plane is
verged on the grating by the transform lens. (ii) All of the incident perpendicular to that. A reference plane set as x0 axis is used to
beams meeting a one-to-one relationship between wavelengths describe the incident field distribution at the surface of the MDG.
and incidence angles are collimated after the diffraction of the The displacement between the mth laser center and the zero point
MDG. (iii) All of the diffraction beams in a common aperture are is pm ¼ mDp, where Dp is the spacing of adjacent fiber lasers.
Assuming that each individual laser is approximately a
fundamental Gaussian beam with beam waist width w0 , the field
Table 1 distribution of the mth individual beam can be written as
Parameters used for simulations of compact SBC system. " #
ðx0  pm Þ2
Parameter Value Parameter Value Em ðx0 ; 0Þ ¼ E0 exp  ; ð1Þ
w20
w0 (lm) 300 k0 (nm) 1064
Dp (mm) 5 a0 (degree) 36.25
f (mm) 300 Axial translation range (lm) 30–300
where E0 is the central amplitude of the incident beam. The propa-
Grating constant d (mm) 1/960 Angular deflection gation matrix between the laser array and the MDG is
Diffraction order q 1 range (mrad) 1–10     ! 
A B 1 z00  f 1 0 1 f
¼ ; ð2Þ
C D 0 1  1f 1 0 1

Fig. 3. The normalized intensity distribution when a single emitter has axial Fig. 4. The normalized intensity distribution when a single emitter has deflection
translation in the fiber laser array: (a) the incident light field of the perturbed angle in the fiber laser array: (a) the incident light field of the perturbed emitter
emitter before the diffraction; (b) the combined light field after the MDG at z = 1 m. before the MDG; (b) the combined light field after the MDG at z = 1 m. I0 is
I0 is maximum intensity of the combined beam corresponding to dx ¼ 30 lm. maximum intensity of the combined beam corresponding to dh ¼ 1 mrad.
284 G. Bai et al. / Optics and Laser Technology 105 (2018) 281–287

( )
where f is the focal length of the transform lens: f > 0 is the convex ½ðx0  pm Þ cos dhm 2
lens; f < 0 is the concave lens. Em ðx0 ; 0Þ ¼ E0 exp 
w20
When the beam propagates through the transform lens, the
field distribution of the beam on the incident plane of the grating  exp ½ikðx0  pm Þ sin dhm ; ð9Þ
can be calculated by utilizing the Collins diffraction integral [14,15]
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi where the phase term is induced by the extra optical path respec-
Z þ1 tive to the reference phase plane z00 ¼ 0 after the rotation. Submit-
00 00 1
Em ðx ; z Þ ¼ expðikm z00 Þ Em ðx0 ; 0Þ ting Eqs. (7) and (9) to Eq. (3), the incident field on the MDG is
ikm B 1
  derived for calculating the diffracted field and beam quality. In
ikm the following, the perturbations of beam deviation on a single emit-
 exp ðAx20  2x0 x00 þ Dx002 Þ dx0 ; ð3Þ
2B ter and the entire array are analyzed in detail.
where km = 2p/km, km is the wavelength of the mth emitter; A, B, C
and D can be obtained by calculating the propagation matrix. Pro- 3. Simulations and results
viding that the complex amplitude in one grating period remains
constant [16], the incident field on the MDG is determined by the Based on the discussion presented above, the corresponding
numerical order of the relief n only and can be recorded as Em ðnÞ. numerical algorithm is built up. For simplicity and without loss
According to scalar diffraction theory [17], the diffraction field of generality, a laser array consisting of seven individual emitters
of the mth emitter after the MDG can be expressed as are adopted in the SBC system (Fig. 1).
The wavelength interval of two adjacent lasers will be deter-
Em ðx; zÞ ¼ F 1 ½FðEm ðnÞ  expði/ÞÞ  Hðf X ; zÞ; ð4Þ
mined by differential operation of the grating equation
2
Dk ¼ Dp  d cos a0 =ðqf Þ [19]. All parameters employed in the
Hðf X Þ ¼ ejkz exp½jpkzf X ; ð5Þ numerical simulations are listed in Table. 1. k0 is the wavelength
where is the near-field phase modulation on the MDG. As subject to
the rigorous coupled wave analysis [13], the near-field equiphase
surface is a plane without thermal deformation on the MDG (/ is
a constant). F is Fourier transform, F1 is inverse Fourier transform,
z is observed distance, and fX is spatial frequency along the x axis. By
the principle of incoherent superposition, the far-field intensity dis-
tribution of the combined beam can be expressed as
P
Iðx; zÞ ¼ M 2
m¼M jEm ðx; zÞj .
2
The M factor of the combined beam on the x axis can be calcu-
lated using the intensity second-order moment method [18]. This
method fits the curve of the squared beam radius w2 of the com-
bined beam against the propagation distance z. The M2 factor of
the combined beam can be calculated from
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
2
p b
w2 ðzÞ ¼ az2 þ bz þ c; M2 ¼ ac  ; ð6Þ
k 4
where parameter a, b and c are obtained by the corresponding poly-
nomial fitting coefficients.

2.2. Model of fiber laser array with beam deviation

The fiber laser array is not perfectly aligned due to fabrication

tolerance, accuracy of artificial adjustment, ambient vibration
and so on. As illustrated in Fig. 2(a), the incident light field with
an axial translation dxm can be corrected as
" #
ðx0  pm  dxm Þ2
Em ðx0 ; 0Þ ¼ E0 exp  : ð7Þ
w20

When the emitters rotate around the output end with the angle
of dhm in Fig. 2(b), the amplitude of the output field is still Gaussian
 
ðx00 p cos dh Þ2
distribution Em ðx00R ; 0Þ ¼ E0 exp  R mw2 m in the new coordi-
0

nate system with z00R axis along the direction of the beam. The
rotated light field is rewrote in the coordinate system x00 oz00 by
the transformation of coordinates, which is expressed as
    
x00R cos dhm  sin dhm x00
¼ : ð8Þ
z00R sin dhm cos dhm z00
The light field of one beam with angular deflection is Fig. 5. Squared of beams radius for different propagation distances with (a) axial
translations and (b) angular deflections of a single fiber laser.
 G. Bai et al. / Optics and Laser Technology 105 (2018) 281–287 285

of central emitter at the zero point (m = 0), and a0 is the incident three different translations. However, the axial translation before
angle of the beam relative to grating normal. the transform lens can induce the change of angles incident on
the MDG. As a result, the one-to-one relationship meeting grating
3.1. Single emitter with axial translation and angular deflection equation between the wavelength and angle of the incident laser is
destroyed. Therefore, the far-field intensity distributions of the
In this section, the central position of fiber laser array (m = 0) is combining beams shown in Fig. 3(b) extend slightly along the
used as perturbation source, occurring quantitative axial transla- transverse (x axis).
tion and deflection angle, respectively. The surface of the grating Fig. 4 gives the intensity distributions of the perturbed emitter
is used as a reference plane to describe the incident field distribu- with angular deflection. Differing from the axial translation in
tion of single perturbed emitter. The diffracted field of entire array Fig. 3(a), the intensity distribution of the perturbed light field
comes along the z axis, which is an important complement to the (Fig. 4(a)) is shifted and the incident light fields do not satisfy
numerical change of beam quality. We take the typical values 30 the common aperture condition (spatially overlapped) at the sur-
lm, 150 lm, 300 lm as the axial translation and 1 mrad, 5 mrad, face of the MDG. The combined far-field intensity distribution is
10 mrad as deflection angle, referring to precision industrial pro- distorted or even split inevitably due to the incident position devi-
cessing standards. ation caused by angular deflection, shown in Fig. 4(b). However,
Fig. 3(a) gives the intensity distribution of the emitter with axial the discussion of the field distribution at a single location cannot
translation before the diffraction. All of the field distributions are quantify the change of beam quality, which is resolved through
spatially overlapped completely at the surface of the grating for iterations of this process at each location.

Table 2
Beam quality of the combined beams with the disturbance of a single emitter.

Beam deviation Axial translations Angular deflections

dxm (lm) dhm (mrad)
30 150 300 1 5 10
M2 Factor 1.01 1.05 1.18 1.15 2.85 5.33

Fig. 6. Beam quality M2 factor of combined beams with random perturbation of fiber laser array: (a) rx ¼ 10 lm, M2 ¼ ð1:003  0:002Þ; (b) rx ¼ 100 lm,
M 2 ¼ ð1:14  0:075Þ; (c) rh ¼ 1=3 mrad, M 2 ¼ ð1:11  0:06Þ; (d) rh ¼ 10=3 mrad, M 2 ¼ ð4:57  1:28Þ.
286 G. Bai et al. / Optics and Laser Technology 105 (2018) 281–287

Fig. 9. The variation tendency of statistical M2 factor with the expansion of the
scale of laser array (rh = 1 mard).

above common aperture condition. The M2 factors of the combined

beam with different beam deviation are given in Table 2, which are
calculated using Eq. (6). When the deflection angle increases from
1 mrad to 10 mrad, the combined beam quality is degraded from
1.15 to 5.33. The changes of M2 factor are more sensitive to the
angular deviation.

3.2. Evaluating M2 factor with random perturbation of entire laser

array

The previous comments focus on the case where a single emit-

ter is misaligned with axial translation and angular deflection. In
practice, for the entire laser array the combined beam quality
can be affected by many error sources, such as fabrication toler-
ance, accuracy of artificial adjustment and ambient vibration.
Due to the randomness of these sources for all emitters, the degra-
Fig. 7. The statistical results of the M2 factor with different beam deviations: (a)
dation of beam quality should be analyzed statistically. A large
axial translation with rx ; (b) angular deflection with rh . number of independent random events tend towards a normal dis-
tribution according to the center limit theorem in probability and
statistical theory [20]. Therefore, beam deviation of misaligned
laser array spreads as a normal distribution with probability den-
sity function (PDF)
!
2
1 ði  li Þ
f ðiÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi exp  Nðli ; r2i Þ; ð10Þ
2pri 2r2i

where i ¼ x; h for the axial translation and angular deflection,

respectively. li denotes the mean; ri is the standard deviation.
About 99.7% of values drawn from a normal distribution are within
3ri away from li . The mean of beam deviation is equal to zero for
the independent and identically distributed random variables. Con-
sequently, the disturbance (dxm and dhm ) of entire laser array can be
considered to locate in the interval [3ri, 3ri], and thus the maxi-
mum random perturbation is equal to 3ri .
The M2 factor is calculated for the standard deviation of axial
translation and angular deflection in the interval [10 lm, 100
lm] and [1/3 mrad, 10/3 mrad]. This simulation is repeated 1000
Fig. 8. The beam quality versus axial translation rx and angular deflection rh . times for rational statistical regularity and M2 values is divided
into 20 samples of sizes uniformly for counting as relative fre-
quency. The density-scaled histograms of probability distribution
The squared beam radius w2 obtained for the combined beam for M2 factor are shown in Fig. 6 with samples of the maximum
under different z is investigated in Fig. 5. Comparing with Fig. 5 and minimum standard deviation. The statistical M2 factor agrees
(b), the axial translation does not increase the beam radius at the to the normal distribution. The degeneration of beam quality
initial position (z = 0) in Fig. 5(a), which is consistent with the caused by the beam deviation is compared with the beam quality
 G. Bai et al. / Optics and Laser Technology 105 (2018) 281–287 287

of fundamental Gaussian beam, whose beam quality factor is quality of 2, the deflection angle expects less than 3 mrad even
M2 = 1. The degradation of beam quality for the axial translation though the axial translation is up to 300 lm corresponding to
is respectively 0:003ð0:002Þ and 0:14ð0:075Þ for the standard the standard deviation of 100 lm in the compact SBC system.
deviation of 10 lm and 100 lm in Fig. 6(a) and (b), for the angular Moreover, the effect of angular deviation on the beam quality will
deflection 0:11ð0:06Þ and 3:57ð1:28Þ corresponding to 1/3 mrad not continue to deteriorate and gradually become constant with
and 10/3 mrad in Fig. 6(c) and (d). the scale expansion of the laser array. These analyses will be ben-
Fig. 7 shows the trend of M2 factor versus the standard devia- eficial to optimize the SBC system for higher power and better
tion of beam deviation. The mean and standard deviation of M2 fac- beam quality output.
tor is increasing gradually with the perturbation parameter (rx and
rh ) in both cases. Second order polynomials are used to fit M2 fac- Acknowledgement
tors. For the axial translation M2x ¼ 104  ð0:13 2x þ 1:31 r rx Þ þ 1:0
and the angular deflection is M2h ¼ 0:26 2h þ 0:35 h þ 1:0.
r r This research is sponsored by the National Natural Science
However, the axial translation and angular deflection are Foundation of China (61405202, 61705243), National Science
always linked with each other in reality, and the overall effects Foundation of Shanghai (16ZR1440100, 16ZR1440200), Program
of beam deviation on the output beam quality are shown in of Shanghai Technology Research Leader (17XD1424800), Shanghai
Fig. 8. Comparing with angular deviation, the axial translation Sailing Program (17YF1421200), the key technologies R&D program
has slight impact on the beam quality within a larger range of Jiangsu (BE2016005-4), and K.C.Wong Education Foundation.
0–100 lm of standard deviation. Therefore, angular deviation is
concerned more for an actual SBC system. When the standard References
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1
For interpretation of color in Fig. 7, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.