Abstract

Quantum-dot (QD) laser devices offer a variety of advantages over conventional quantum-well (QW) lasers due to their low threshold currents and their high temperature stability. In general, QD lasers show strongly damped relaxation oscillations, due to the charge carrier scattering between the QD and off-resonant reservoir states in the device, which leads to less complicated dynamics under optical feedback and optical injection when compared to QW or bulk lasers [1-3]. The charge carriers influence both the gain and the refractive index of the active region, which leads to the amplitude-phase coupling, commonly characterized by the linewidth enhancement factor α. This coupling is widely assumed to be small for QD lasers, leading to α-factors on the order of ~1. However, the use of an α-factor in QD lasers has been controversially discussed [4], and it was shown that the QD laser dynamics can not be accurately described by using an α-factor [5].

© 2013 IEEE