Abstract

Considerable effort has gone into the design, fabrication and testing of semiconductor laser arrays as researchers try to obtain highpower concentrated into a diffraction limited far-field. Unfortunately, many of the designs lead to an undesirable twin-lobed far-field. Furthermore, in those few cases that reported single-lobed performance, the single lobe typically exceed the diffraction limit. Near-field phase measurements of a semiconductor laser array can provide valuable insight into the device performance. In this paper we report on measurements at the output facet of semiconductor lasers and laser arrays using a simple self-referencing interferometer (1) that allows accurate phase measurements, typically 1/30 of a wavelength.

© 1987 Optical Society of America