Abstract

When semiconductor lasers are used in optical telecommunication and optical interconnect applications, it is desirable to have as low an electrical power consumption as possible, i.e. a low operating current. However, if used in a high data transmission rate system, there may be a minimum requisite modulation bandwidth. In addition, signal-to-noise considerations often demand a minimum optical output power. While lowering the threshold current often improves the bandwidth and output power at a given operating current, it is not true that a laser optimized solely for the lowest threshold current will have the lowest operating current when biased to meet the requirements of a particular system. In this talk we discuss how the laser device parameters are optimized to produce the lowest operating current in applications with given bandwidth and optical power requirements.

© 1995 Optical Society of America