Patent ID: 11867987
Assignee: LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION
Field: Optics (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A heterodyne phase-controlled beam-combiner system, the system comprising:
a laser source configured to generate a light beam;
a first beam splitter configured to split the light beam into a plurality of beamlets;
a plurality of phase modulators, a phase modulator of the plurality of phase modulators is configured to tag each beamlet of the plurality of beamlets with an arbitrary phase dither signal;
a tiled array including a plurality of lenslets and configured to combine tagged beamlets and direct combined light to a second beam splitter;
an optical mixer configured to generate a heterodyne light including tagging information; and
an optical element configured to focus a second output light of the second beam splitter to form a far-field proxy light,
wherein,
the phase dither signal is about an arbitrary phase setpoint or offset,
a first output light of the second beam splitter comprises a target light directed to a target, and
the arbitrary phase offset is configured to achieve a desired intensity profile at a location of the target.