Angle-etched facet laser arrays (fan laser arrays)

We present a novel individually addressable diode laser array that uses angle-etched facets. By arranging the lasers in a fan-like structure, all lasers emit in different directions from a common effective aperture. Using this device design, we demonstrate lasers with beam directions that are fixed and distinct, stable, single mode, and capable of simultaneous and random access operation. We analyze both the effect of facet roughness on the performance of etched-facet diode lasers, as well as the thermal crosstalk characteristics of angle-etched facet lasers. Thermal crosstalk characteristics of angle-etched facet lasers are experimentally compared to parallel stripe lasers. The combination of the aperture and thermal crosstalk reduction allows us to reduce the effective thermal coupling between array elements by over one order of magnitude. We show a novel two-dimensional scanner built with a fan laser array: results demonstrate the feasibility of these novel arrays for multibeam applications.