Coherent beam combining of cylindrical vector beams for power scaling.

Coherent beam combining (CBC) of cylindrical vector beams (CVBs) based on an active phase controller is proposed and demonstrated. Experimentally, two pieces of spatially variant wave plates (S-wave plate) were employed as vector mode convertors for two individual 1064-nm fiber amplifier channels. When the system was in a closed loop, a combined output power of 10 W and a CBC efficiency of higher than 94% were achieved, for both TM (radially polarized) mode and TE (azimuthally polarized) mode cases. Moreover, the laser system showed a high vector mode purity, which was measured to be ∼97.4% (TM) and ∼97.3% (TE). To the best of knowledge, this could possibly be the first demonstration of CBC of CVBs, which paves the way for power scaling of CVBs.