1. Context

In order to overcome power limits and further increase the performance of systems using these solid-state lasers, it is possible to add the power emitted simultaneously by several lasers, and thus exceed the intrinsic power limits of a single laser. These processes for adding the power of several single lasers are known as laser source combination techniques. They differ from one another in terms of efficiency, since some processes involve losses that do not always allow 100% of the combined power of the lasers to be available after combination. Of course, the aim is to achieve this maximum efficiency and not lose any laser power during combination, but depending on the technique used, this is not always possible.

Numerous techniques have been developed and tested over the years: incoherent cross-polarization mixing, wavelength multiplexing mixing, coherent addition...