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 (1.4.10(8) deg/s) and sensitivity to current (1.2 deg/100 mu A). 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).