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

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-respo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Micromachines (Basel) 2012-03, Vol.3 (1), p.36-44
Main Authors: Saha, Tapas Kumar, Lu, Mingyu, Ma, Zhenqiang, Zhou, Weidong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
diffraction gratings
guided waves
laser beam steering
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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.
ISSN:2072-666X
2072-666X
DOI:10.3390/mi3010036