Patent ID: 7680170

Claim:
An optical apparatus, comprising: at least one stacked array of laser emitter bars which each have a plurality of laser emitters with a fast axis, a slow axis and an emission axis that is substantially perpendicular to the fast and slow axes disposed in a substantially linear configuration along a slow axis direction of the emitters and which are stacked along a fast axis direction of the emitters with the emitters of the at least one stacked array having substantially parallel emission axes and a substantially uniform polarization orientation; a fast axis collimator disposed adjacent the at least one stacked array and configured to collimate an output of the emitters of each laser emitter bar of the at least one stacked array in a fast axis direction; a beam interleaver having an input axis aligned with the output axes of the laser emitters of the at least one stacked array of laser emitter bars and configured to interleave a first output array from a plurality of laser emitter bars and a second output array from a plurality of laser emitter bars such that substantially fast axis collimated outputs of emitter bars of the first output array are disposed adjacent or between substantially fast axis collimated outputs of emitter bars of the second output array with the fast axes of the emitters of the first output array substantially aligned with the fast axes of the emitters of the second output array; a beam combiner having an input axis aligned with an output axis of the beam interleaver and configured to fold the vertically interleaved emission arrays of the first and second output arrays so as to reduce the overall beam size and increase the overall beam intensity; and focusing optics aligned with an output axis of the beam combiner.