Abstract

Cooling of hot carriers and phonon dynamics are two major physical processes in the hot-carrier regime of semiconductors and semiconductor nanostructures where the carrier temperature is different from the lattice temperature [1][2]. Since the optical susceptibility (thus, gain and refractive index) is a function of the carrier temperature, carrier heating relating to these two processes is expected to play an important role on the performance of semiconductor lasers, such as modulation bandwidth, frequency chirping, nonlinear distortion, linewidth rebroadening, and power-independent linewidth. It was also experimentally demonstrated that a subpicosecond switch-off and switch-on of semiconductor lasers can be realized by such a transient hot-carrier effect.

© 1998 IEEE