Beam steering modulation with phased vertical cavity laser arrays

Electronically steerable laser sources have applications in areas such as optical display, free space communications, and illumination. Among the multiple figures of merit for beam steering, speed is still a limiting factor for many applications including laser radar [1]. While mechanical methods clearly have inertial limitations, even the fastest available liquid crystal optical phased array techniques are limited to speeds under 10 kHz [2, 3]. We show that electronic beam steering using phased vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays [4-6] can be steered as fast as 100 MHz while possessing the inherent advantages of system robustness, radiation hardness, and energy efficiency.