Propagation of high-power partially coherent fibre laser beams in a real environment

The propagation performance of high-power partially coherent fibre laser beams in a real environment is investigated and the theoretical model of a high-power fibre laser propagating in a real environment is established. The influence of a collimating system and thermal blooming is considered together with atmospheric turbulence and mechanical jitter. The laser energy concentration of partially coherent beams in the far field is calculated and analysed based on the theoretical model. It is shown that the propagation performance of partially coherent beams depends on the collimating system, atmospheric turbulence, mechanical jitter and thermal blooming. The propagation performance of partially coherent beams and fully coherent beams is studied and the results show that partially coherent beams are less sensitive to the influence of thermal blooming, which results in that the energy degeneration for partially coherent beams is only 50% of that for fully coherent beams. Both partially coherent beams and fully coherent beams become less sensitive to thermal blooming when the average structural constant of the refraction index fluctuations increases to 1.7 × 10−14m−2/3. The investigation presents a reference for applications of a high-power fibre laser system.