Mutual injection locking and coherent beam combining of multiple Nd:YVO 4 lasers

We demonstrated mutual injection locking and coherent beam combining of three individual Nd:YVO4 laser modules. A beam splitter couples three lasers as well as combines their outputs. In the free running state, the divergence of combined beams is large. Under mutual injection locking, the divergence of the combined beams becomes substantially smaller than that in the free-running state and is as small as that of the individual laser beam. Mutual injection locking was also realized without active stabilization with large individual laser cavity length difference and low individual laser Q-factor.© (2005) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.