Surface emission laser driving method and surface emission laser device

A surface emission laser device comprising:

• a plurality of surface emission lasers disposed on a same substrate;
• a drive circuit that drives the plurality of surface emission lasers;
• and
• a temperature sensor, wherein
• the drive circuit generates a plurality of drive pulses to be sequentially outputted to, out of the plurality of surface emission lasers, each of the surface emission lasers selected as light-emission targets, on a basis of the number of surface emission lasers selected as the light-emission targets and a monitoring temperature that is immediately prior to light emission of each of the surface emission lasers selected as the light-emission targets, and thereafter outputs the plurality of generated drive pulses to each of the surface emission lasers selected as the light-emission targets,
• the temperature sensor is disposed at a position at which a thermal time constant from an active layer of each of the surface emission lasers becomes shorter than a pulse interval of the plurality of drive pulses, and
• the temperature sensor measures the monitoring temperature.