High-power (cw) in-phase locked ‘‘<i>Y</i>’’ coupled laser arrays

Abstract

Buried heterostructure phased array lasers have been fabricated with ‘‘Y’’ coupling regions to produce in-phase locking. The far-field pattern corresponding to the in-phase emission of ten waveguides is stable under wide variations of operating conditions. Power outputs of up to 200 mW cw and 400 mW pulsed are obtained from a ten-element (50 μm aperture) array. By monitoring the far-field pattern under impulse excitation, the phase locking is shown to evolve in less than 300 ps.