INTRACAVITY PHASE CORRECTION OF AN EXTERNAL TALBOT CAVITY LASER WITH THE USE OF LIQUID-CRYSTALS

Arrays of GaAlAs emitters have been diffractively coupled by using an external Talbot cavity to support a single spatial mode; however, element-to-element phase differences distort the desired spatial mode. To enable element-to-element phase correction, we incorporated a 20-element array of tunable liquid-crystal phase shifters into a 20-element GaAlAs external Talbot cavity laser. Using the tunable phase shifters, we corrected spatial mode distortions, which resulted in 663 mW of nearly diffraction-limited power.