High-Speed Beam Steering With Phased Vertical Cavity Laser Arrays

We demonstrate electronic beam steering using phased vertical cavity laser arrays at record high speed (1.4·10⁸ deg/s) and sensitivity to current (1.2 deg/100 μA). The relative phase and coherence between the array elements are extracted with a Fraunhoffer propagation method. The spatially resolved spectrum and beam steering dynamics are also analyzed. The thermo-optic effect is found to dominate the phase-shifting mechanism at lower speed steering, while the electronic variation in index dominates at higher speeds (≥10 MHz).