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Reduced polarization decay due to carrier in-scattering in a semiconductor active medium
The in-scattering processes, which reduce the decay of the active medium polarization, should be included in a consistent treatment of semiconductor laser gain. The in-scattering processes affect the laser gain by decreasing the influence of the high k-states, which contribute absorption to the spectrum. A theory, based on the semiconductor-Bloch equations with the effects of carrier-carrier scattering treated at the level of the quantum kinetic equations in the Markov limit, predicts gain spectra that do not exhibit absorption below the renormalized band gap, in agreement with experiment. When compared to gain calculations where the in-scattering contribution is neglected, the theory predicts markedly different properties for intrinsic laser parameters, such as peak gain, gain bandwidth, differential gain and carrier density at transparency, especially at low carrier densities.