Design of an Angle Detector for Laser Beams Based on Grating Coupling

Micromachines

Tapas Kumar Saha²  Mingyu Lu²  Zhenqiang Ma¹ 

[1] Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, USA;

关键词: diffraction gratings;    guided waves;    laser beam steering;   

DOI  :  10.3390/mi3010036

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A novel angle detector for laser beams is designed in this paper. It takes advantage of grating coupling to couple the incident light into a slab waveguide; and, the incident light’s angle can be determined by reading the outputs of light detectors within the waveguide. This device offers fast-responding on-chip detection of laser beam’s angle. Compared to techniques based on quadrant photodiodes or lateral effect photodiodes, the device in this paper has far greater detectable range (up to a few degrees, to be specific). Performance of the laser angle detector in this paper is demonstrated by finite-difference-time-domain simulations. Numerical results show that, the detectable angle range can be adjusted by several design parameters and can reach [−4°, 4°]. The laser beam angle detector in this paper is expected to find various applications such as ultra-fast optical interconnects.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.