title: High speed, high power one-dimensional beam steering from a 6-element optical phased array.
abstract: Beam steering at high speed and high power is demonstrated from a 6-element optical phased array using coherent beam combining (CBC) techniques. The steering speed, defined as the inverse of the time to required to sweep the beam across the steering range, is 40 MHz and the total power is 396 mW. The measured central lobe FWHM width is 565 μrad. High on-axis intensity is maintained periodically by phase-locking the array via a stochastic-parallel-gradient-descent (SPGD) algorithm. A master-oscillator-power-amplifier (MOPA) configuration is used where the amplifier array elements are semiconductor slab-coupled-optical-waveguide-amplifiers (SCOWAs). The beam steering is achieved by LiNbO(3) phase modulators; the phase-locking occurs by current adjustment of the SCOWAs. The system can be readily scaled to GHz steering speed and multiwatt-class output.
authors.affiliation: Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lexington, Massachusetts 02420, USA. we21748@mit.edu
authors.forename: W Ronny
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Montoya
authors.forename: Jan E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Kansky
authors.forename: Shawn M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Redmond
authors.forename: George W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sanchez-Rubio