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Phonon-assisted stimulated emission and ultra-thin active layers in cleaved-cavity and vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers

Thesis/Dissertation ·
OSTI ID:5647668

Unique lasing processes in III-V semiconductor lasers are examined. The dynamics of stimulated photon emissions in thin AlGaAs/GaAs single quantum well lasers are observed experimentally and modeled by rate equations describing the electron and photon densities. Agreement between experiment and theory are achieved when the transition probability matrix, calculated with the spreading out of electron and hole wave functions taken into account, is used. The phonon assisted stimulated photon emission observed in this work is delayed with respect to the unassisted emission. This observation is modeled by using a weaker matrix element for the unassisted process which is expected from theory and thus supports the author' claim that this emission is phonon assisted. Rate equations developed to simulate doubly stimulated emission of photons and phonons do not describe the experimental data so the possibility of stimulated phonon emission is ruled out for the samples studied in this work. Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers are also studied since they can be designed to support unique lasing processes. The design and growth of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers are discussed and these concepts are applied to the realization of a vertical cavity surface emitting laser with the thinnest active layer of any laser yet reported. Stimulated emission supported across the sub-monolayer thick InAs single quantum well active region can be understood by considering the spreading of the electron and hole wavefunctions beyond the confines of the quantum well to increase the length of the effective gain region.

Research Organization:
North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States)
OSTI ID:
5647668
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English