Patent ID: 7436588

Claim:
A system for combining light beams of different and identical wavelengths into a single composite beam of substantially identical shape as the individual beams, comprising: N oscillators, each transmitting a light beam at a different one of N wavelengths; one or more beam splitters for splitting each one of the N beams into M beams of common wavelength; a phase modulation stage for locking phases of the M beams at each of the N wavelengths according to phase correction signals; a diffractive optical element combining the M×N phase-locked light beams into N incoherent beams, each incoherent beam a coherent combination of M beams at one of the N wavelengths; a phase detection means for detecting the phases of the M beams comprising each incoherent beam; a means for deriving the phase correction signals from the detected phases; and a grating for spectrally combining the N incoherent beams into a single composite beam; wherein M and N are integers.