Sub-wavelength-pitch silicon-photonic optical phased array for large field-of-regard coherent optical beam steering

TLDR: A 5mm-long optical phased array with 3.3° axial beam steering and > 40° lateral beam steering with no sidelobes in ±33° field-of-regard is designed and fabricated.

Abstract: This paper reports on large field-of-regard, high-efficiency, and large aperture active optical phased arrays (OPAs) for optical beam steering in LIDAR systems. The fabricated 5 mm-long silicon photonic OPA with a 1.3 μm waveguide pitch achieved adjacent waveguide crosstalk below −12dB. A relatively large and uniform emission aperture has been achieved with a low-contrast silicon nitride assisted grating (~20 dB/cm) whose emission profile can be further optimized using an apodized design. The fabricated silicon-photonic OPA demonstrated > 40° lateral beam steering with no sidelobes in a ± 33° field-of-regard and 3.3° longitudinal beam steering via wavelength tuning by 20 nm centered at 1550 nm. We have fully integrated the silicon photonic OPA device with electronic controls and successfully demonstrated 2-dimensional coherent optical beam steering of pre-planned far-field patterns. Future improvements include placement of a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) underneath the grating emitter in order to achieve nearly a factor of two improvement in emission efficiency.