Carrier lifetime and recombination in long-wavelength quantum-well lasers

We present a novel analysis for correcting the measured differential carrie r lifetime to account for carrier population in both the barrier and separa te confinement heterostructure (SCH) regions of quantum-well (QW) lasers, T his analysis uses information obtained from the measured spontaneous emissi on spectra to correct the measured lifetime and obtain the intrinsic well l ifetime. Once the intrinsic well lifetime is obtained, the intrinsic well r ecombination coefficients can also be obtained. We show that the carrier po pulation in the barrier/SCH layers can significantly affect the measured ca rrier lifetime and the extracted recombination coefficients. We also show t hat this analysis yields transparency carrier density and differential gain numbers which are very different from those obtained with the traditional analysis and much closer to what is predicted for highly strained QW lasers , These differences indicate the importance of accounting for barrier/SCH c arriers on the measurement of basic QW laser material properties.