Carrier transport effects and dynamics in multiple quantum well optical amplifiers

The gain recovery dynamics of multiple quantum well semiconductor optical amplifiers, following gain compression caused by ultrashort optical pulse excitation, have been studied for several devices of different structures. Fast, slow, and intermediate time constants are identified. The fast component (0.6 to 0.9 ps) corresponds to cooling of the dense, inverted electron-hole plasma. The slow component (150 to 300 ps) corresponds to replenishment of carriers from the external bias supply, with the dynamics dominated by spontaneous recombination (primarily Auger) of the electron-hole plasma. The intermediate time constant (2 to 14 ps) is caused by carrier capture by the quantum wells and is structure-dependent. For most of the devices, the capture process is dominated by diffusion-limited transport in the cladding/barrier region. The variation of carrier density and temperature also affects the refractive index profile of the devices and, hence, affects the waveguiding properties. Dynamical variation of the mode confinement factor is observed on the fast and slow timescales defined above.