Traveling Wave Model for Frequency Comb Generation in Single-Section Quantum Well Diode Lasers

摘要

Our paper is a significant advancement in the modeling of multimode quantum-well (QW) based semiconductor diode lasers. The model is much more complete than previous published laser models and includes many complex physical phenomena such as inhomogeneous gain broadening, carrier-induced refractive index shift, and spatial hole burning, all derived from first principles. We have also gained significant understanding of the important physical parameters for frequency modulated comb generation from a QW diode laser, with insights on device design and material. Such details have not yet been elucidated in previously published works on FM comb generated from QW diode lasers. Our model should be useful for researchers attempting to fabricate and optimize QW diode lasers for all sorts of applications, particularly frequency comb generation, wave mixing, and optical parametric amplification.We present a traveling wave model for a semiconductor diode laser based on quantum wells. The gain model is carefully derived from first principles and implemented with as few phenomenological constants as possible. The transverse energies of the quantum well confined electrons are discretized to automatically capture the effects of spectral and spatial hole burning, the gain asymmetry, and the linewidth enhancement factor. We apply this model to semiconductor optical amplifiers and single-section phase-locked lasers. We are able to reproduce the experimental results. The calculated frequency modulated comb shows potential to be a compact, chip-scale comb source without additional external components.