Hybrid III/V silicon photonic source with integrated 1D free-space beam steering

A chip-scale optical source with integrated beam steering is demonstrated. The chip was fabricated using the hybrid silicon platform and incorporates an on-chip laser, waveguide splitter, amplifiers, phase modulators, and surface gratings to comprise an optical phased array with beam steering across a 12° field of view in one axis. Tuning of the phased array is used to achieve 1.8°(steered axis)×0.6°(nonsteered axis) beam width with 7 dB background suppression for arbitrary beam direction within the field of view.