Temperature dependence of electrical and optical modulation responses of quantum-well lasers

We present theory and experiment for high-speed optical injection in the absorption region of a quantum-well laser and compare the results with those of electrical injection including the carrier transport effect. We show that the main difference between the two responses is the low-frequency roll-off. By using both injection methods, we obtain more accurate and consistent measurements of many important dynamic laser parameters, including the differential gain, carrier lifetime, K factor, and gain compression factor. Temperature-dependent data of the test laser are presented which show that the most dominant effect is the linear degradation of differential gain and injection efficiency with increasing temperature. While the K-factor is insensitive to temperature variation for multiple-quantum-well lasers, we find that the carrier capture time and nonlinear gain suppression coefficient decreases as temperature increases.