High brightness laser source based on polarization coupling of two diode lasers with asymmetric feedback

In this letter, we show that polarization coupling and asymmetric diode-laser feedback can be used to combine two diode-laser beams with low spatial coherence into a single beam with high spatial coherence. The coupled laser source is based on two similar laser systems each consisting of a 1 mumx200 mum broad area laser diode applied with a specially designed feedback circuit. When operating at two times threshold, 50% of the freely running system output power is obtained in a single beam with an M-2 beam quality factor of 1.6+/-0.1, whereas the M-2 values of the two freely running diode lasers are 29+/-1 and 34+/-1, respectively. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.