Abstract

Recent theoretical and experimental work has shown that the use of multiple quantum wells (QWs) in the active region of semiconductor lasers has led to significant improvements in their intrinsic frequency response. Here we derive the relationships among the optimal modulation bandwidth, optical power, number of QWs and other laser device parameters by considering the 2-D characteristics of the injected carriers in the QWs and both the differential gain and nonlinear gain caused damping effects. These results are used to study the modulation bandwidth optimization. The multiple QW structures are superior to single QW structures on modulation bandwidth only in some limited ranges of device parameters, but the optical power to reach the optimized modulation bandwidth decreases as the number of QWs increases. The maximum optimized modulation bandwidth increases as the number of QWs increases, but there is an ultimate limit. Compared with that of the bulk structure lasers this ultimate limit is lower.

© 1991 Optical Society of America