Coherent combining of two fiber lasers in a Michelson-type coupled cavity

Coherent combining of two fiber lasers using a Michelson-type coupled cavity has been demonstrated experimentally. To make the fiber lasers combined efficiently, two convergent lenses are introduced into the two arms of the coupled cavity, and an f–f arrangement is specially configured for the cavity to improve internal feedback. When the lenses are taken away, the output power decreases to nearly 78.5% of its original value, and the coherent state become less stable than before. Through tuning the FBG (fiber Bragg grating) of one fiber laser, the converting process from incoherent state to coherent state is investigated, and the spectrums, output power and the beam patterns all indicate that the brightness of coherent state increases to nearly twice of incoherent state’s, i.e. four times of component laser’s.