Patent ID: 8199398

Claim:
A high peak power fiber amplifier system, comprising: a multicore fiber having an array of fiber amplifiers disposed therein, said amplifiers being spaced such that thermal fluctuations of said amplifiers are matched sufficiently to limit relative phase fluctuations at amplifier outputs to a bandwidth less than 10 kHz, and such that optical energy coupling between any of the amplifiers is negligible; a laser source for seeding said array of amplifiers and producing pulses having pulse widths in the range of femtoseconds to about 1 microsecond; a beam distributor disposed between said laser source and said array to distribute a pulse from said laser source into a plurality of beam paths incident on corresponding amplifiers of the array, wherein beams in said paths have a spatial distribution substantially similar to the spatial distribution of an output pulse of said laser source; at least one pump source configured for optically pumping said fiber amplifier array; a plurality of phase-control elements arranged in a spatial relation and optically connected to fiber amplifiers of said array, said elements modifying an optical phase of at least one fiber amplifier output in response to phase-control signals; and a phase control unit for producing said control signals to control the optical phase at the output of a majority of said fiber amplifiers, wherein said control signal and said phase control elements stabilize the optical output phase between the majority of said individual fiber amplifiers.