Experimental demonstration of coherent beam combining with a two-dimensional conformal fiber laser array

In this manuscript, we present an experimental demonstration of coherent beam combining (CBC) with a two-dimensional conformal fiber laser array utilizing homemade adaptive fiber-optics collimator (AFOC) based on flexible hinges with simultaneous end-cap/tilt control and phase-locking control. The deflection displacements of the AFOC is in range of 0~48 µm in X direction and 0~34 µm in Y direction, and the effective working frequency of the device is about 700 Hz. Moreover, the conformal CBC system of three fiber lasers using the new type of AFOC is successfully achieved. Experimental results show that the tilt control makes the three separate beams overlapped well. By analysis the results, the average voltage value in PD increases from 2.56V in open loop to 6.11V in closed loop. The fringe contrast is improved from 0% to more than 88% correspondingly.