Phase-locking observed among high-order lateral modes of a broad-stripe diode array inside an external cavity

For a laser diode array (LDA) positioned in an external cavity of a certain length, a very strong inter-emitter coupling can be established between the off-axis lateral modes of the broad-stripe emitters. Under these circumstances, the phase-locked operation of the LDA due to couplings between off-axis modes of emitters has been observed, for the first time to our knowledge. The observations suggest that phase locking of a broad-stripe LDA can be achieved among different emitter lateral modes by selecting different cavity lengths.