A novel surface emitting GaAs/AIGaAs laser diode beam steering device based on surface mode emission

Abstract

We present a novel surface emitting laser diode beam steering device based on the excitation and emission of surface modes. This new device is a wavelength tunable GaAs/AlGaAs laser diode, which is modified to allow a coupling of the laser mode to a transverse electric polarized surface mode. A steering of the surface emitted farfield pattern is achieved by a variation of the emission wavelength. By electrically switching the emission wavelength from 877.54 run to 879.13 nm the dominant surface emitted peak is steered by 0.4°.