SBIR-STTR Award

The goal of this project is to develop a power-scalable laser source suitable for laser designation of targets.The main thrust will focus on power scaling of individual laser elements using passive coherent beam combination technology.Scaling the output power of a single laser element beyond a few 100 mW presents a significant challenge as phenomena such as catastrophic optical damage or heat dissipation typically limit the maximum power that a laser diode can generate.Use of passive coherent beam combination allows circumventing such limitations and scale the output power by simply adding more single elements, while maintaining a diffraction-limited beam quality and the simplicity of laser diodes.