Laser-fabricated delay lines in GaAs for optically steered phased-array radar

Abstract

We have used laser direct fabrication techniques to implement optical delay lines on an epitaxial GaAs/AlGaAs substrate. These integrated photonic circuits, which are important for optically-controlled phased-array radar, include asymmetric splitters with various splitting ratios, smoothly curved 90/spl deg/ bends, as well as linear waveguides. The delay lines were tested and found to have the desired delay and a power-output uniformity of /spl plusmn/2-4%.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>