Supermodes of hermite tapered arrays of vertical-cavity semiconductor lasers

Two-dimensional arrays of vertical-cavity semiconductor lasers were prepared by mirror patterning. The size of the laser elements of the array was tapered according to the Hermite polynomial zeros, in order to achieve a multilobed far-field pattern, e.g., for applications as an array illuminator. Injecting short current pulses (/spl sim/100 ns) to the N/spl times/N Hermite tapered vertical-cavity semiconductor laser array resulted in the lasing of anti-phase supermodes, similar to supermodes of uniform size but (N+2)/spl times/(N+2) laser arrays. Excitation by a long pulse resulted in a supermode localized on the larger elements of the array-exhibiting the desired multilobed far-field intensity pattern.