Based on the premise that further improvements to the size and damage threshold of large-aperture optical components are severely limited, coherent beam combining (CBC) is a promising way to scale up the available peak power of pulses for ultrashort ultrahigh intensity laser systems. Spectral phase effects are important issues and have a significant impact on the performance of CBC. In this work, we analyze systematically factors such as spectral dispersions and longitudinal chromatism, and get the general spectral phase control requirements of CBC for ultrashort ultrahigh intensity laser systems. It is demonstrated that different orders of dispersion influence intensity shape of the combined beam, and high-order dispersions affect the temporal contrast of the combined beam, while the number of the channels to be combined has little impact on the temporal Strehl ratio (SR) of the combined beam. In addition, longitudinal chromatism should be controlled effectively since it has a detrimental effect on the combined beam at the focal plane, both temporally and spatially.

Without discrete optical components influencing the fiber format, all-fiber mode-locked laser has tremendous potential practical applications due to its advantages of better stability, alignment free, and better compaction. All-fiber laser mode-locked by nonlinear polarization evolution (NPE) can obtain good performances in terms of pulse duration and spectrum. But the effective saturable absorption mirror can be overdriven at high peak power, which leads to multiple pulses, limiting the output pulse energy. And there is a trade-off between avoiding overdriving the NPE and ease of self-starting. In addition, the polarization of the pulse propagating in a long fiber is so sensitive to the environment vibration that it is difficult to implement a stable lone-time operation. All-fiber ring laser mode-locked by NPE alone is analyzed and realized. The simulation results show that even a polarization vibration of /38 can break the mode-locking completely. Experimentally, after carefully adjusting, singlepulse mode-locking is achieved with the spectrum centered at 1053.4 nm and a maximum pulse energy of 82 pJ. But the output parameters change continually during operating. After 60 min, the mode-locking is broken. The conclusion is obtained that instability and unreliability of self-starting are inevitable for such a laser. Here, we show significant improvements of the pulse energy, operating stability, and self-starting reliability from an all-fiber Yb-doped mode-locked fiber laser. The laser is mode-locked by NPE combined with chirped pulse spectral filtering (CPSF). In order to easily self-start and stabilize mode locking, a spectral filter is employed in the all-normal group velocity dispersion NPE cavity to provide additional amplitude modulation. Combined effects of NPE and CPSF result in desirable pulse output, desirable operating stability, and reliable self-starting simultaneously. Stable mode-locking centered at 1053 nm is achieved with a 3 dB spectral bandwidth of 9.1 nm and pulse duration of 17.8 ps. The average output power is 66.9 mW at a repetition rate of 15.2 MHz, corresponding to a pulse energy of 4.25 nJ. Especially, high operating stability and easily one-button self-starting are achieved simultaneously. The fluctuations of output parameters including pulse energy, pulse duration, and spectrum are within 0.3% during 150-min operation. Self-starting reliability is tested. The testing time lasts two weeks. During the two weeks, the laser is turned off and turned on 48 times by using a power supplying button, without any adjustment. And the re-turned on intervals change randomly. Each time, the mode-locking can start itself. The repeatabilities of output parameters including pulse energy, pulse duration, and spectrum are within 0.55%.

Large-aperture ultrashort ultrahigh intensity laser systems are able to achieve unprecedented super-high peak power. However, output power from a single laser channel is not high enough for some important applications and it is difficult to improve output power from a single laser channel significantly in the near future. Coherent beam combining is a promising method which combines many laser channels to obtain much higher peak power than a single channel. In this work, phase effects of coherent beam combining for large-aperture ultrashort laser systems are investigated theoretically. A series of numerical simulations are presented to obtain the requirements of spatial phase for specific goals and the changing trends of requirements for different pulse durations and number of channels. The influence of wavefront distortion on coherent beam combining is also discussed. Some advice is proposed for improving the performance of combining. In total, this work could help to design a practical large-aperture ultrashort ultrahigh intensity laser system in the future.

Aiming at getting the general requirements of the beam combine for ignition scale laser facilities, the analytical expressions including the factors affecting the combine results are derived. The physical meanings of every part are illustrated. Based on these expressions, the effects of the factors, including the beam configuration, piston error, and tip/tilt error, are studied analytically and numerically. The results show that the beam configuration cannot affect the Strehl ratio (SR) of the combined beam, but it influences the FWHM of the main peak and the ratio of the main peak and the side peak. The beam separation should be no more than 1.24 times the individual beam width for the multibeam combine, and be close to the individual beam width for the two-beam combine as much as possible. The piston error can change the characteristics of the combine beam focus, including the peak intensity, the focal spot morphology, the fractional energy contained within a certain area, and the center of mass. For the two-beam combine, a piston error less than 2π∕5 rad is suitable, and for the multibeam combine, the standard deviation of the piston error should be no more than 2π∕10 rad. The tip/tilt error has a great influence on the combined results. It affects the superposition degree of the focal spots of the combined elements directly. A requirement of 0.5 ～ 1 μrad for the standard deviation of the tip/tilt error is adequate.