Based on transferring energy from multiple pump beams into one Stokes
beam using Brillouin amplification, a serial coherent laser beam
combination scheme is presented, which has many advantages, such as,
simple structure, low cost, ease of adjustment, higher load capability,
scalable easily, etc. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that the
combination of several beams using this method is theoretically possible.
But in practice, the amplification of high power Stokes beam is a key
problem to solve. In this paper, the amplification of Stokes beam whose
power is higher than the pump beam is first studied and proved
experimentally. Coupling the two laser beams by this method is proved
experimentally, and the coupling efficiency reaches more than 80%. Then
the feasibility of multiple beams combination based on Brillouin
amplification is analyzed and tested theoretically.
Investigation of serial coherent laser beam combination based on
Brillouin amplification