High Beam Quality of In-Phase Coherent Coupling 2-D VCSEL Arrays Based on Proton-Implantation

Two-dimensional coherently coupled arrays of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers were fabricated using proton implantation. A 2 × 2 array with the far field beamwidth of 3.6° ( 1.18×diffraction limited), the output power of 0.45 mW, and the spectral line width of 0.2 nm was achieved for continuous wave operation at room temperature. It showed an excellent beam quality due to the in-phase coupling among the elements in the array. The array performance dependence on injection current level and thermal effects was discussed. The processing for the arrays is considerably simple and can be used as an alternative to other array implementations.