Abstract

During the last two years there has been rapid development in grating surface emitting (GSE) diode laser array technology. This has led to the recent demonstration of coherent monolithic two-dimensional arrays of 100 (10x10) distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers.¹ These arrays are attractive for optoelectronic integrated curcuit applications, since a large number of GSE lasers can be coupled by a network of waveguides on a single wafer. The use of DBR sections both as output couplers and feedback elements eliminates the need for cleaved facets, and, therefore, GSE arrays are not subject to failure due to catastrophic facet damage. In addition, the grating surface-emitting area can be made sufficiently large that far-field beam divergences of much less than 1° are produced. Since GSE arrays contain multiple emitting regions all separated by electrically independent gain sections, electronic beam steering is possible by suitable adjustment of the gain section currents.

© 1989 Optical Society of America