EFFECT OF CARRIER HEATING ON STATIC LINEARITY OF MQW INGAASP INP LASERS/

Carrier heating can degrade the linearity of the light-current (GI) ch aracteristics of a laser diode, which is a critical parameter for devi ces used in cable television (CATV) systems. On the basis of experimen tal estimation of the carrier heating rate above threshold, we conside r the contributions of different mechanisms through which carrier heat ing can cause static nonlinearity, Comparison with measured L-I charac teristics shows that the contribution of carrier heating to GI nonline arity is considerably less than previously estimated [1], We conclude that the carrier heating effect is not a dominant mechanism in produci ng the intermodulation distortions.