Internal phase control of fiber laser array based on photodetector array

Coherent beam combining(CBC) of fiber laser array is a promising technique to realize high output power while maintaining near diffraction-limited beam quality. To implement CBC, an appropriate phase control feedback structure should be established to realize phase-locking. In this paper, an innovative internal active phase control CBC fiber laser array based on photodetector array is proposed. The dynamic phase noises of the laser amplifiers are compensated before being emitted into free space. And the static phase difference compensation of emitting laser array is realized by interference measurement based on photodetector array. The principle of the technique is illustrated and corresponding simulations are carried out, and a CBC system with four laser channels is built to verify the technique. When the phase controllers are turned on, the phase deviation of the laser array is less than λ/20, and ~ 95% fringe contrast of the irradiation distribution is obtained. The technique proposed in this paper could provide a reference for the system design of a massive high-power CBC system.

Four distributed feedback laser array integrated with multimode-interference and semiconductor optical amplifier

Monolithic integration of four 1.55-μm-range InGaAsP/InP distributed feedback （DFB） lasers using varied ridge width with a 4 x 1-multimode-interference （MMI） optical combiner and a semiconductor optical amplifier （SOA） is demon- strated. The average output power and the threshold current are 1.8 mW and 35 mA, respectively, when the injection current of the SOA is 100 mA, with a side mode suppression ratio （SMSR） exceeding 40 dB. The four channels have a 1-nm average channel spacing and can operate separately or simultaneously.

Coupled-ridge waveguide quantum cascade laser array lasing at λ~5μm

In this work,we demonstrated high-power quantum cascade laser(QCL)arrays lasing at λ~5μm by employing an optimized coupled-ridge waveguide(CRW)structure.Five-element QCL arrays were simulated and fabricated through a two-step etching method to extend the CRW structure to a mid-wave infrared regime.A lateral far-field with the main peak near a diffraction-limited intensity curve of about 10°was observed by properly designing a geometric shape of the ridges and interspaces.By introducing a buried 2nd-order distributed feedback(DFB)grating,substrate emission with a radiation power above 1 W at 25℃ is achieved.Single longitudinal mode operation is obtained by changing the temperature of the heatsink with a good linear wavelength tuning coefficient of -0.2 cm^(-1)/K.

Thermal Analysis of Implant-Defined Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser Array

A three-dimensional electrical-thermal coupling model based on the finite element method is applied to study thermal properties of implant-defined vertical cavity surface emitting laser （VCSEL） arrays. Several parameters including inter-element spacing, scales, injected current density and substrate temperature are considered. The actual temperatures obtained through experiment are in excellent agreement with the calculated results, which proves the accuracy of the model. Due to the serious thermal problem, it is essential to design arrays of low self-heating. The analysis can provide a foundation for designing VCSEL arrays in the future.

Simulation of Far-Field Properties of Coherent Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser Array

Far-field properties dependent on array scale, separation, element width and emitted wavelength are system atically analyzed theoretically and experimentally. An array model based on the finite-difference method is established to simulate the far-field profile of the coherent arrays. Some important conclusions are obtained. To achieve a higher quality beam, it is necessary to decrease separation between elements, or to increase the element width. Higher brightness can be achieved in the array with larger scale. Emitted wavelength also has an influence on the far-field profile. These analyses can be extended to the future design of coherent vertical cavity surface emitting laser arrays.

Effect of asymmetrical channel chirping on field intensity patterns of supermodes and modal discrimination in index guided laser arrays

The effect of channel-width chirping on near- and far-field intensity patterns of the six supermodes was investigated. The supermode discrimination was evaluated in various channel-chirped index guided laser arrays. The results show that the linearly channel-chirped laser array has very good supermode discrimination which is better than that of a uniform laser array, the V channel-chirped laser array has the smallest radiation angle of the fundamental supermode among the calculated arrays, and the asymmetrically V channel-chirped array has a very small radiation angle of the fundamental supermode, which is smaller than that of the uniform array and also allows for very good fundamental supermode discrimination against the higher-order supermodes, which is better than that of the V channel-chirped laser array.

External Cavity Tuning of Coherent Quantum Cascade Laser Array Emitting at^7.6μm

An external cavity quantum cascade laser （QCL） array with a wide tuning range and high output power is pre- sented. The coherent QCL array combined with a diffraction grating and gold mirror is tuned in the Littrow configuration. Taking advantage of the single-lobed fundamental supermode far-field pattern, the tuning capa- bility of 30.6cm-1 is achieved with a fixed injected current of 3.5 A at room temperature. Single-mode emission can be observed in the entire process. The maximum single-mode output power of the external cavity setup is as high as 25mW and is essential in real applications.

10 W QCW operation of a proton implanted GaAlAs diode laser array

We report one thick layer of hard-baked photoresist mask.The laser array stripe pattern was defined by standard wet lithography.With this mask, a 10 W QCW(quasi-continuous wave) operation of a narrow proton implanted multiple stripe conventional single quantum well separate confinement heterostructure(SQW-SCH) GaAlAs diode laser array has been realized.These devices exhibit the lateral far-field radiation pattern of a phase-locked array of gain-guided semiconductor injection laser array.The twenty stripe laser array has a lateral far-field beam divergence full width at half maximum(FWHM) of less than 3°,and three twenty stripe laser array has a beam divergence in the plane of the junction of about 9°.

Facet Reflection Coefficient of Phase-lockedDiode Laser Array in an External Cavity

A diode laser array(DLA)positioned in an external cavity can receive the radiations emitted from its neighboring elements (C 1) and that of itself (S) after being reflected at the DLA facet as well as from the external mirror (C 0). Considering the fact that｜C 0/S｜ should be larger than unity if the external cavity is effective,and｜C 1/S｜ should be larger than unity if the phase locking may be established in the external cavity.The requirements on the reflection at the facet of the diode laser array have been specified in terms of the cavity length and reflection coefficient of the external mirror.

Beam Steering Analysis in Optically Phased Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser Array

Beam steering in implant defined coherently coupled vertical cavity surface emitting laser （VCSEL） arrays is simulated using the FDTD solution software. Angular deflection dependent on relative phase differences among elements, inter-element spacing, element size and emitted wavelength is analyzed detailedly and systematically. We design and fabricate 1×2 implant defined VCSEL arrays for optimum beam steering performance. Electroni- cally controlled beam steering with a maximum deflection angle of 1.6° is successfully achieved in the 1 × 2 VCSEL arrays. The percentage of the power in the central lobe is above 39% when steering. The results show that the steering is controllable. Compared with other beam steering methods, the fabrication process is simple and of low cost.

Efficient single‑pixel imaging based on a compact fiber laser array and untrained neural network

This paper presents an efficient scheme for single-pixel imaging(SPI)utilizing a phase-controlled fiber laser array and an untrained deep neural network.The fiber lasers are arranged in a compact hexagonal structure and coherently combined to generate illuminating light fields.Through the utilization of high-speed electro-optic modulators in each individual fiber laser module,the randomly modulated fiber laser array enables rapid speckle projection onto the object of interest.Furthermore,the untrained deep neural network is incorporated into the image reconstructing process to enhance the quality of the reconstructed images.Through simulations and experiments,we validate the feasibility of the proposed method and successfully achieve high-quality SPI utilizing the coherent fiber laser array at a sampling ratio of 1.6%.Given its potential for high emitting power and rapid modulation,the SPI scheme based on the fiber laser array holds promise for broad applications in remote sensing and other applicable fields.

Coherent combining of a fiber laser array via cascaded internal phase control technique

We experimentally demonstrated a cascaded internal phase control technique.A laser array with 12 channels was divided into three sub-arrays and a stage array,and phases of the sub-arrays and the stage array were locked by four phase controllers based on the stochastic parallel gradient descent(SPGD)algorithm,respectively.In this way,the phases of the whole array were locked,and the visibility of the interference pattern of the whole emitted laser array in the far field was∼93%.In addition,the technique has the advantage of element expanding and can be further used in the high-power coherent beam combination(CBC)system due to its compact spatial structure.

Flat-Panel Laser Displays Based on Liquid Crystal Microlaser Arrays

Laser displays,benefiting from the characteristic merits of lasers,have led to the revolution of next-generation display technologies owing to their superior color expression.However,the acquisition of pixelated laser arrays as self-emissive panels for flat-panel laser displays remains challenging.Liquid crystal(LC)materials with excellent processability and optoelectronic properties offer considerable potential for the construction of highly ordered multicolor laser arrays.Here,we demonstrate flat-panel laser displays on LC microlaser pixel arrays through a microtemplate-assisted inkjet printing method.Individual organic red-green-blue(RGB)microlaser pixel arrays were obtained by doping dyes into LCs with photonic band edges to obtain single-mode RGB lasing,leading to a much broader color gamut,compared with the standard RGB color space.Then we acquired periodically patterned RGB pixel matrices by positioning LC microlasers precisely into highly ordered arrays,according to the well-organized geometry of the microtemplates.Subsequently,we demonstrated full-color flat-panel laser displays using the LC microlaser pixel matrices as self-emissive panels.These results provide valuable enlightenment for the construction of next-generation flat-panel laser display devices.

Experimental demonstration of λ/8 DFB semiconductor laser array for 1.3 μm CWDM system

In this article,we report the first experimental demonstration of an eight-wavelength λ/8 phased-shifted laser array based on the REC technique in the 1.3 μm wavelength domain.Measurement results exhibit good linearity of lasing wavelength with+/-0.35 nm wavelength residual.The SLM property was ensured with SMSRs all larger than 38 dB.Moreover,the directmodulation performance was also tested.The experimental results show that the modulation bandwidth can reach up to 13GHz even at the small injection current of 40 mA and the measured spurious-free dynamic range(SFDR)is up to 87 dB/Hz2/3,which shows good linearity.These measurements show that REC-based λ/8 phased-shifted laser array has good modulation performance and it may find potential application in actual fiber-optic systems.

Directly modulated 25 Gbaud/s tunable in-series DFB laser array for WDM systems

In this Letter,we proposed and experimentally demonstrated a directly modulated tunable laser based on the multi-wavelength distributed feedback(DFB)laser array.The lasers are placed in series to avoid the usage of an optical combiner and additional power loss.A three-section design is utilized to reduce the interference from other lasers and improve the electro-optic response bandwidth.Besides,the reconstruction-equivalent-chirp technique is used to simplify the grating fabrication and precisely control the grating phase.We realized 12 channels with 100 GHz spacing with high side mode suppression ratios of above 50 dB.The output power of all the channels is above 14 mW.The 3 dB electro-optic bandwidth is above 20 GHz at a bias current of 100 mA for all four lasers.A 25 Gb/s data transmission over a standard single-mode fiber of up to 10 km is demonstrated for all 12 channels,and 50 Gb/s data per wavelength is obtained through the four-level pulse amplitude modulation.The proposed directly modulated tunable in-series DFB laser array shows the potential for a compact and low-cost light source for wavelength division multiplexing(WDM)systems,such as next-generation front-haul networks and passive optical networks.

Wideband tunable REC-DFB laser array using thin-film heaters on the submount

A wideband wavelength-tunable 4×5 distributed feedback(DFB)semiconductor laser array based on the reconstructionequivalent-chirp(REC)technique using a simple tuning scheme is demonstrated.It consists of 20 DFB lasers with 4×5matrix interleaving distributions,two-level cascaded Y-branch optical combiners,and one active semiconductor opticalamplifier(SOA),all in-series integrated on one chip.Unlike the traditional thermal-electric cooler(TEC)-based wavelength-tuning scheme,the tunable 4×5 REC-DFB laser array achieves a faster and broader continuous wavelength-tuningrange using TaN thin-film heaters integrated on the AlN submount.By changing the injection current of the TaN resistorfrom 0 to 190 mA,the proposed tunable laser achieves a wavelength-tuning range of∼2.5 nm per channel and a total tuningof over 50 nm.This study opens up new avenues for realizing cost-effective and wide-tuning-range semiconductor lasers.

A 1.55-μm laser array monolithically integrated with an MMI combiner

The monolithic integration of four 1.55-μm range InGaAsP/InP distributed feedback lasers with a 4× 1 multimode-interference （MMI） optical combiner using the varied width ridge method is proposed and demonstrated. The average output power is 1.5 mW when the current of LD is 100 mA and the threshold current is 30-35 mA at 25 ℃. The lasing wavelength is 1.55-μm range and 40 dB sidemode suppression ratio is obtained. The four channels can operate separately or simultaneously.

Some Suggestions Improving Apollo Lunar Laser Retroreflector Arrays

According to our engineering research on satellite-borne laser retroreflector array, some suggestions are proposed on how to manufacture a new Apollo LLRA that can make us measure one illuminating point and unilluminating area on the moon's surface. These suggestions are: to control the dihedral angle offset within ± 0.1″; to use the larger aperture of the transparent face of cube corner prisms; to investigate how to separate out Apollo's reflected laser from mixed beam hitting on the LLR system.

Design and analysis of the Macao Science Satellite-1's laser retro-reflector array

The origin and spatial-temporal variation of the Earth’s magnetic field(EMF)is one of the important scientific problems that has long been unsolved.The Macao Science Satellite-1(MSS-1)under construction is China’s first high-precision EMF measurement satellite.To satisfy the highly precise requirements of the MSS-1 orbit measurement,a light,high-precision,four-prism laser retroreflector array was designed.It weighs approximately 285 g,its effective reflection area is greater than 1.77 cm^(2),and its size is 100×100×41 mm.The laser retro-reflector array has excellent performance,and it can achieve a ranging precision at the subcentimeter level for satellite laser ranging.It will be developed and installed on the MSS-1 as a power-free load for high-precision orbit measurement and accurate orbit calibration.The MSS-1 is planned to be brought into the International Laser Ranging Service observations.More than 31satellite laser ranging stations in the International Laser Ranging Service around the world will be able to measure the MSS-1 with long arcs,which will support the scientific mission of high-precision EMF exploration.

Thermal analysis of GaN-based laser diode mini-array

Thermal characteristics of multiple laser stripes integrated into one chip is investigated theoretically in this paper. The temperature pattern of the laser diode mini-array packaged in a TO-can is analyzed and optimized to achieve a uniform temperature distribution among the laser stripes and along the cavity direction. The temperature among the laser stripes varies by more than 5 K if the stripes are equally arranged, and can be reduced to less than 0.4 K if proper arrangement is designed. For conventional submount structure, the temperature variation along the cavity direction is as high as 7 K, while for an optimized trapezoid submount structure, the temperature varies only within 0.5 K.