Carrier Recombination in Semiconductor Lasers: Beyond the ABC

Fully microscopic models are used to calculate the carrier losses due to spontaneous emission and Auger recombination in semiconductor lasers. It is shown that the theory gives excellent agreement with the experiment using only basic experimental input and standard material parameters. The density dependence as assumed in semi-empirical approaches for spontaneous emission, J
_SE
=BN
²
and Auger, J
_Auger
=+CN
³
is shown to lead to errors of a factor of three or more even if the correct constants B and C are known for low densities