Hot carriers and the frequency response of quantum well lasers

A simple analytical model is obtained to describe the effect of carrier heating on the frequency response of a quantum well laser. The principal factors are taken to be injection heating, recombination heating, and hot phonons. The model is applied to the GaAs/GaInAs strained layer system and is shown to qualitatively account for many of the nonideal features observed. The nonlinear effects cannot be described satisfactorily by a single phenomenological ‘‘gain suppression’’ factor. However, at low drives the conventional gain suppression factor can be expressed in terms of the phonon lifetime and the temperature-relaxation time. The response is mediated by several time constants which, in our example, combine to give an effective time constant of about 10 ps. The modulation frequency response becomes seriously impaired when the differential gain is lowered by a factor of 2 and the time constants describing scattering and phonon lifetime are increased by a factor of 2.