US 11,867,987 B1
Phase-controlled beam combiners
Bruce G. Tiemann, Longmont, CO (US); and Philip Gatt, Berthoud, CO (US)
Assigned to LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION, Bethesda, MD (US)
Filed by LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION, Bethesda, MD (US)
Filed on Feb. 20, 2020, as Appl. No. 16/796,852.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/929,679, filed on Nov. 1, 2019.
Int. Cl. G02F 1/01 (2006.01); G02B 3/00 (2006.01); G02B 27/10 (2006.01)
CPC G02F 1/01 (2013.01) [G02B 3/0037 (2013.01); G02B 27/106 (2013.01); G02F 1/0121 (2013.01); G02F 2203/50 (2013.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
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.