Two-dimensional apodized silicon photonic phased arrays

Abstract

In this Letter, we demonstrate an 8×8 apodized silicon photonic phased array where the emission from each of 64 nanoantennas was tailored to exhibit Gaussian-shaped intensity distributions in the near field so that the sidelobes of the generated far-field optical beam were suppressed compared to that of a uniform phased array. With the aid of the 72 thermo-optic phase tuners directly integrated within the phased array, we dynamically shaped the generated optical beam in the far field in a variety of ways.