The effect of lateral leakage current on the experimental gain/current-density curve in quantum-well ridge-waveguide lasers

We stress the importance of considering the effect of lateral leakage current on the material gain/current-density characteristics measured from ridge-waveguide diode lasers. It is found that the inclusion of lateral leakage current is crucial to obtaining a self-consistent result. An experimental demonstration has been performed on an In/sub 0.2/Ga/sub 0.8/As/AlGaAs strained single quantum-well laser sample, from which a gain curve with transparency current density of 53.8 A/cm/sup 2/ was obtained. By using devices of different geometries, the variation of leakage currents is measured and the accuracy of the resultant gain curves is discussed.>