FIBERTEK, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: MDA18-013

Description

Phase modulation, to disrupt the coherence of a laser when applied to a high energy laser, aids in preventing the buildup of the efficiency limiting nonlinear effect known as Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) and has shown to increase the threshold to which SBS becomes significant. A variety of phase modulated binary signals and multi-level arbitrary signals have been shown to improve the output of a high energy laser with demonstrated improvements reliant on specific pattern lengths and tailored signals. We propose the develop a low size, weight, power and cost unit that provides phase modulation of user-defined sequences tailored to an amplifier with the potential to self-characterize and adapt to compensate for signal distortions due to components. We anticipate such a product will enable hardware to emulate closer to ideally simulated patterns and optimize the power through an amplifier with laser linewidths less than 10 GHz. Additionally, each unit will have the ability to synchronize, ingest and modulate multiple wavelengths simultaneously to aid in efficient high energy laser beam combining applications such as coherent and spectral beam combining. We aim to design towards ruggedization of the unit as a path towards a product for fieldable systems. Approved for Public Release | 18-MDA-9817 (23 Oct 18)