Transport limits in high-speed quantum-well lasers: experiment and theory

Abstract

It is shown experimentally that the modulation bandwidth of quantum well lasers can be reduced by a factor of six due to carrier transport across undoped layers of the laser as in the separate confinement heterostructure (SCH). Analytical expressions are given for the modulation response function, resonance frequency, damping rate and K factor to include carrier transport, and it is shown that carrier transport is responsible for a low-frequency rolloff which limits the modulation response of quantum-well lasers. It also shown that carrier transport leads to a reduction in the effective differential gain, while the gain compression factor remains largely unaffected by it.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>