Basic Considerations for Incoherent Combination of High-Power Laser Systems

Incoherent combination of laser beams is presented as a viable path for performance scaling. Even though this technique can be used with any laser source, it is particularly well-suited for multicore fibers due to the dense packaging of the emitters in these systems. In this work we discuss the basic considerations for this approach, revealing its underlaying scaling laws as well as its unique beam shaping abilities. Comparisons with the emission from multimode fibers are made, revealing the superiority of the multicore-fiber approach.