In-Phase Coherently-Coupled Optically-Pumped VECSEL Array

Optical pumping of quantum dot micropillar lasers

“…Individual electrical contacts for each laser needs to allocate a large fraction of a chip's surface area to electrical wires, and as a consequence the number of devices in such laser arrays remain small, usually limited to ¡100 lasers 6,7 . Free-space pumping techniques do not suffer from this limitation and hence can alleviate this bottleneck in the general context of research 12 but also in applications 19,34 . Furthermore, high speed electrical modulation is prohibited due to the capacity of long electrical connections in large arrays.…”

Optically pumped VECSELs: review of technology and progress

“…Finally, VECSELs can also employ ring cavities, as demonstrated in [79]. In addition, for the sake of generality, we also note that VECSELs have been demonstrated with coherently coupled arrays [80] and beam combining [81]. [85], and 900 nm at 5 µm [86].…”

Demonstration of an in-phase, coherently-coupled 37-element VECSEL array

“…The chip-on-submount was then mounted to a Cu heatsink for testing. No additional patterning or processing of the chip was performed [10]. The setup for the optically pumped VECSEL is shown in Figure 2.…”

“…The imaging lens was used for near-field measurements and removed for far-field measurements[10]. (Right) Photograph of the experimental setup.…”

“…The image was taken under QCW operation at pump power of 3X threshold. (c) Simulated far field image from a 7-element hexagonal array of 980 nm laser emitters with 62 μm beam waists, 250 μm element pitch, and assuming mutual coherence between the elements[10].…”