Electrically steerable lasers using wide-aperture VCSELs

Abstract

A wide-aperture vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser has been fabricated so as to enhance the transverse mode selection. It was found that the far field emission can be made to exhibit two distinct steerable beams. The laser beams may be steered from 30° away from the normal right up to normal emission by varying the driving current. The steering effect is a thermal effect as confirmed by transient waveform analysis. A two-channel switch was built with switching time between channels of 10 μs and crosstalk of greater than 18 dB. Show more