Engineering the polarization-dependent saturation in quantum-wellsurface-emitting semiconductor lasers

摘要

We discuss how the polarization dependence of the saturation innvertical-cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) can be influenced bynthe design of the quantum-well (QW) gain medium. As an important conceptnin our discussion, we use carrier reservoirs, i.e., we separate thencarrier population into a number of subpopulations. Specifically, wentreat VCSELs in which the carriers are separated on the basis of theirnspin, their momentum, or on the basis of their spatial position. Bynnumerically analyzing the rate equations for one specific case, we shownhow a properly chosen polarization dependence of the saturation leads tonpolarization self-modulation