Dispersion-compensated wavelength beam combining of quantum-cascade-laser arrays

A multiwavelength array of distributed feedback (DFB) quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) that spans lambda = 8.28 to 9.62 mu m is wavelength beam combined (WBC) using both single-grating and dual-grating designs. WBC with a single grating results in a pointing error of 3-times the beam divergence for a single laser and arises from the nonlinear dispersion of the grating. By adding a second grating to compensate for the nonlinear dispersion, the pointing error is reduced to only 13% of the beam divergence for a single laser. A transceiver based on the dual-grating-WBC QCL was used to measure the transmittance of a polymer sheet placed between itself and a retroreflector over a round-trip distance of 70 meters. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America