Coherent addition of laser beams in resonant passive optical cavities.

An optical resonator, designed for frequency doubling of cw single-frequency radiation, is simultaneously injected by two phase-coherent laser beams with the same frequency. By using standard methods in laser-cavity stabilization, we are able to stabilize the cavity length on resonance with the laser, as well as the relative phase of the fundamental beams, to fulfill the optimum coupling conditions simultaneously on the two input couplers. By using this method, we generate reliably more than 220 mW of single-frequency radiation at 399 nm using two 0.5 W semiconductor tapered amplifiers at 798 nm. This method can be generalized to a larger number of input couplers and holds promise for improving the performances of extreme-UV frequency combs.