Autostable injection locking of a 4x4 VCSEL array with on-chip master laser

Bernd Luecke; Guido Hergenhan; Uwe Brauch; Markus Scholl; Adolf Giesen; Hans Opower; Helmut Huegel

doi:10.1117/12.384381

1 May 2000 Autostable injection locking of a 4x4 VCSEL array with on-chip master laser

Bernd Luecke, Guido Hergenhan, Uwe Brauch, Markus Scholl, Adolf Giesen, Hans Opower, Helmut Huegel

Proceedings Volume 3946, Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers IV; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.384381
Event: Symposium on Integrated Optoelectronics, 2000, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Stable phase-locking of a VCSEL array of N equals 16 emitters with the master laser on the same chip is demonstrated. To accomplish the injection-locking a very small portion of the master radiation is seeded frontally into the 16 slave lasers. All VCSELs are driven by one voltage source with small individual series resistors to compensate for frequency differences. The beams are collimated by a microlens array and are commonly focused. A factor 14 increase of the peak power density of the superimposed beams compared to the unlocked operation is achieved (overall system coherence 85%) without any phase control. The coherent operation is stable for hours without any sophisticated voltage or temperature control. By slightly varying the current of each emitter within the locking range a maximum phase shift of (pi) can be achieved for each emitter. In this way residual phase differences between the individual beams can be compensated. The fraction of the master power necessary to lock one slave laser is below 10^-3. Therefore, scaling to very large arrays is possible. Apart from simply increasing the peak power density of the chip, a promising perspective for data transmission applications is the GHz-modulation of the system coherence. The locking of the array can be switched by a very small (2%) modulation of the master current thereby switching the peak power density by a factor of nearly N.

Citation Download Citation

Bernd Luecke, Guido Hergenhan, Uwe Brauch, Markus Scholl, Adolf Giesen, Hans Opower, and Helmut Huegel "Autostable injection locking of a 4x4 VCSEL array with on-chip master laser", Proc. SPIE 3946, Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers IV, (1 May 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.384381

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