Dually modulated photonic crystals enabling high-power high-beam-quality two-dimensional beam scanning lasers

Ryoichi Sakata,Shin Fukuhara,Masahiro Yoshida,John Gelleta,Yoshinori Tanaka,Menaka De Zoysa,Kenji Ishizaki,Susumu Noda,Ranko Hatsuda,Kintaro Iwata,Takuya Inoue

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17092-w

Ryoichi Sakata, Shin Fukuhara + Show 9 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17092-w

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Journal: Nature Communications	Publication Date: Jul 17, 2020
Citations: 48	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Kyoto University

Abstract

Mechanical-free, high-power, high-beam-quality two-dimensional (2D) beam scanning lasers are in high demand for various applications including sensing systems for smart mobility, object recognition systems, and adaptive illuminations. Here, we propose and demonstrate the concept of dually modulated photonic crystals to realize such lasers, wherein the positions and sizes of the photonic-crystal lattice points are modulated simultaneously. We show using nano-antenna theory that this photonic nanostructure is essential to realize 2D beam scanning lasers with high output power and high beam quality. We also fabricate an on-chip, circuit-driven array of dually modulated photonic-crystal lasers with a 10 × 10 matrix configuration having 100 resolvable points. Our device enables the scanning of laser beams over a wide range of 2D directions in sequence and in parallel, and can be flexibly designed to meet application-specific demands.

Highlights

Mechanical-free, high-power, high-beam-quality two-dimensional (2D) beam scanning lasers are in high demand for various applications including sensing systems for smart mobility, object recognition systems, and adaptive illuminations
Two-dimensional (2D) beam scanning is an essential technique for various applications including light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems in autonomous driving[1,2,3,4] and smart mobility of robots[5], object recognition systems[6], and adaptive illuminations[7]
We propose the concept of dually modulated photonic crystals, and show that the simultaneous modulation of both the positions and sizes of the photonic-crystal lattice points are essential to realize the emission of a beam in any 2D direction with a high-output power and high-quality beam

Summary

Introduction

Mechanical-free, high-power, high-beam-quality two-dimensional (2D) beam scanning lasers are in high demand for various applications including sensing systems for smart mobility, object recognition systems, and adaptive illuminations. For band-edge modes C and D, the electric-field 1⁄2S0Eðr0m;nÞ at each nanoantenna is finite (see the red and blue arrows in the lower panels of Fig. 2a); the electric-field vectors of adjacent nanoantennas point in opposite directions, so the total emission is cancelled out in the far field (see Supplementary Note 3 and Supplementary Eq (17)).

Results

Conclusion