Nonlinear gain effects due to carrier heating and spectralholeburning in strained-quantum-well lasers

The authors present numerical results for the nonlinear gain effects due to carrier heating and spectral holeburning in 50 Å strained In_xGa_1-xAs/Al_0.3Ga_0.7 As quantum-well lasers. Calculations are performed on the basis of a 4×4 matrix system consisting of the usual Kohn-Luttinger Hamiltonian and a strain Hamiltonian for the valence band structure. In addition, the authors perform a small-signal analysis based on four dynamic equations for the photon density, carrier density, and two supplementary equations for the electron and hole energy densities to obtain information about nonlinear gain coefficients. The results indicate that the nonlinear gain is enhanced with the strain mainly due to the rapid increase of the carrier heating effect as the carrier density at the lasing threshold decreases, and that carrier heating is about five times as important compared to spectral holeburning