Abstract

Optical phased arrays (OPAs) are devices that use the coherence of light to control the interference pattern in the far field, which enables them to steer a laser beam with no moving parts. As such, OPAs have potential applications in laser communications, target acquisition and tracking, metrology, and directed energy. In this Letter, we present a control architecture for an actively phase-locked OPA, capable of steering a laser beam at speeds limited by the actuation bandwidth of electro-optic modulators. The system achieved an output phase stability of $\lambda /770$ and steering speeds up to 1 MHz. The digital control architecture can be extended to GHz steering speeds, is readily scalable to hundreds of emitters, and is compatible with high-power arrays.

© 2020 Optical Society of America

Optical phased array beam steering in the mid-infrared on an InP-based platform

Jason Midkiff, Kyoung Min Yoo, Jong-Dug Shin, Hamed Dalir, Mohammad Teimourpour, and Ray T. Chen
Optica 7(11) 1544-1547 (2020)

Liquid-cladded optical phased array for a single-wavelength beam steering

Binghui Li, Caiming Sun, Hongjie Wang, Zhenmin Chen, Xiaomin Nie, Shupeng Deng, Lesi Yang, and Aidong Zhang
Opt. Lett. 46(19) 4948-4951 (2021)

Ultrasound beam steering using a fiber optic ultrasound phased array

Jingcheng Zhou, Xu Guo, Cong Du, and Xingwei Wang
Opt. Lett. 44(21) 5390-5393 (2019)

Integrated lithium niobate optical phased array for two-dimensional beam steering

Gongcheng Yue and Yang Li
Opt. Lett. 48(14) 3633-3636 (2023)

Optical phased array neural probes for beam-steering in brain tissue

Wesley D. Sacher, Fu-Der Chen, Homeira Moradi-Chameh, Xinyu Liu, Ilan Felts Almog, Thomas Lordello, Michael Chang, Azadeh Naderian, Trevor M. Fowler, Eran Segev, Tianyuan Xue, Sara Mahallati, Taufik A. Valiante, Laurent C. Moreaux, Joyce K. S. Poon, and Michael L. Roukes
Opt. Lett. 47(5) 1073-1076 (2022)