Wavelength variation of 1.6 µm wavelength buried heterostructure GaInAsP/InP lasers due to direct modulation

Abstract

Wavelength shift during the period of direct modulation (dynamic wavelength shift) for injection lasers having a BH structure has been investigated both experimentally and theoretically. A GaInAsP/InP BH laser emitting a nominal wavelength of 1.61 μm was modulated by a sinusoidal current at frequencies in the range of 0.2-2 GHz. The full width of the dynamic wavelength shift was 0.35 nm at a modulation frequency of 1.8 GHz, and a modulation depth of 63 percent at a bias current 1.14 times the threshold current. It was found that the width of the dynamic wavelength shift increases with proportion to the modulation depth, and with inverse proportion to the bias current at a frequency below 1 GHZ. The differential coefficient <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">dn/dN</tex> of refractive index <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</tex> for carrier density <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">N</tex> in the active region was measured for the purpose of the analysis. The value obtained is <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1.2 \times 10^{-20}</tex> cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> . The dynamic shift of the lasing wavelength was found to be characteristic of the change of the refractive index induced by the oscillation of carrier density in the active region during intensity modulation. The theoretical shift shows maximum value at a resonance-like modulation frequency. The peak height of the resonance wavelength shift is strongly affected by carrier diffusion in the transverse direction, and has a minimum value when stripe width is nearly equal to carrier diffusion length.