Abstract

Most Arrays reported to date have been uniform structures which show double lobed farfield patterns ¹ In the present work, we point out the feasibility of using a nonuniform gain profile to favor the fundamental supermode ² and experimentally demonstrate a. gain-guided phase-locked array incorporating this principle which shows nearly diffraction limited single lobe operation. Fabrication of this device is simple, and suited to large-scale processing techniques We also show that such an asymmetric gain guided array has the desirable property that the fundamental supermode is favored over all other supermodes and that higher order supermodes can have farfield patterns very similar to the single lobed farfield pattern of the fundamental.

© 1984 Optical Society of America