EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL-STUDY OF THE CARRIER CAPTURE TIME

We present an experimental and theoretical study of the carrier captur e time into a semiconductor quantum well. We observe for the first tim e the predicted oscillations of the phonon emission induced capture ti me experimentally and found good agreement with theory. Calculations s how that not only does the LO phonon emission induced capture time (ph capture) oscillate as a function of well width, but also the carrier- carrier scattering induced capture time (c-c capture) oscillates by mo re than an order of magnitude as a function of the active layer design . Recently, it has been shown that the carrier capture time is directl y related to the modulation bandwidth in a quantum well laser. As a re sult, it might be possible to tailor the modulation bandwidth by optim izing the capture efficiency using a proper design of the active layer in a quantum well laser.