Fourier-method beam analysis for coherent vertical cavity surface emitting laser arrays

Effective engineering and exploitation of coherently coupled vertical cavity surface emitting laser arrays will benefit from simple and fast characterization of the optical coupling and coherence. We propose a Fourier method of analyzing beam profiles as an alternative to the prior beam visibility analysis and show that the mode suppression ratio and phase between a pair of supermodes can be extracted. Our analysis enables fast quantitative determination of the array coherence and supermode characteristics.