A multiple-fiber, stretched, fused and cleaved coupler designed to act as
an output window to a fiber laser array or fiber-coupled laser array, in
which the stretch, length and/or position of the fibers is chosen
facilitate the in-phase oscillation of the lasers in the array. The
in-phase oscillation of the lasers is facilitated by making one or more
of the fibers interferometrically dark and having a different propagation
constant than the other fibers. The other fibers, the interferometrically
lit ones, are made to have fairly uniform intensity under the same
collimated illumination.