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IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics

Linewidth enhancement factor in InGaAs quantum-dot amplifiers

Stephan Schneider, Paola Borri, W. Langbein, U. Woggon, Roman L. Sellin, D. Ouyang, D. Bimberg

Published Sep 28, 2004• 83 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report systematic measurements of the linewidth enhancement factor (LEF) in an electrically pumped InGaAs quantum-dot (QD) amplifier in the temperature range from 50 K to room temperature. At injection currents below transparency, the value of the linewidth enhancement factor of the ground-state interband (excitonic) transition is between 0.4 and 1, and increases with increasing carrier density. Additionally, we investigate the spectral dependence of the LEF by tuning the wavelength of our optical probe from below resonance with the ground state of the QDs up to resonance with the first optically active excited-state transition. We find a decrease of the LEF with increasing photon energy at all investigated temperatures.

DOI
10.1109/jqe.2004.834779

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We report systematic measurements of the linewidth enhancement factor (LEF) in an electrically pumped InGaAs quantum-dot (QD) amplifier in the temperature range from 50 K to room temperature. At injection currents below transparency, the value of the linewidth enhancement factor of the ground-state interband (excitonic) transition is between 0.4 and 1, and increases with increasing carrier density. Additionally, we investigate the spectral dependence of the LEF by tuning the wavelength of our optical probe from below resonance with the ground state of the QDs up to resonance with the first optically active excited-state transition. We find a decrease of the LEF with increasing photon energy at all investigated temperatures.
We present an extensive experimental study of the exciton relaxation and dephasing in InGaAs quantum dots (QDs) in the temperature range from 10 K to 295 K. The QDs are embedded in the active region of an electrically pumped semiconductor optical amplifier. Ultrafast four-wave mixing and differential transmission spectroscopy on the dot ground-state transition are performed with a sensitive heterodyne detection technique. The importance of the population relaxation dynamics to the dephasing is determined as a function of injection current and temperature. Above 150 K dephasing processes much faster than the population relaxation are present, due to both carrier-phonon scattering and Coulomb interaction with the injected carriers. Only at low temperatures (<30 K) does population relaxation of multiexcitons in the gain regime fully determine the dephasing.
The ultrafast gain recovery dynamics of the first excited state (ES) is studied in an electrically pumped InGaAs quantum-dot amplifier at room temperature and compared with the ground-state (GS) gain dynamics. Pump-probe differential transmission experiments are performed in heterodyne detection and the gain dynamics are investigated as a function of injection current. An ultrafast (<200 fs) initial gain recovery of both GS and ES transition is found, promising for optical signal processing at high bit rates. The obtained results suggest the occurrence of a fast recovery of the state occupation mediated by carrier-carrier scattering as long as a reservoir of carriers in the ESs and wetting layer is present.
We present temperature-dependent measurements of the dephasing time in the ground-state transition of strongly-confined InGaAs quantum dots, using a highly sensitive four-wave mixing technique. At low temperature we measure a dephasing time of several hundred picoseconds. Between 7 and 100 K the polarization decay has two distinct components resulting in a non-Lorentzian lineshape with a sharp zero-phonon line and a broad band from elastic exciton-acoustic phonon interactions. We also explore the dephasing time beyond the one exciton occupation, by electrically injecting carriers. Electrical injection into the barrier region results in a dominantly pure dephasing of the excitonic ground-state transition. Once the injected carriers have filled the electronic ground state, additional filling of the excited states creates multiexcitons that show a fast dephasing due to population relaxation.
We demonstrate room temperature optically and electrically controllable group delay using population oscillation in a quantum-dot (QD) semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). A reduction of the group index up to 10% with a bandwidth of 13 GHz is achieved under different configurations of injection current and optical pump intensity. Our theoretical results based on population pulsation agree well with experimental data. We extract the linewidth enhancement factor and effective carrier diffusion coefficient of the QD SOA. We also observe slow light when the injection current is increased.
We measured the gain dynamics at the ground-state transition in an electrically pumped InP/AlGaInP quantum-dot optical amplifier at room temperature by femtosecond differential transmission. The gain shows an ultrafast recovery within 200 fs, even faster than in state-of-the-art InAs/GaAs quantum-dot amplifiers. This finding, likely to be due to the less confined and more closely spaced hole levels in InP dots, is promising for optical signal processing at high bit rates. We furthermore measured the pump-induced refractive index changes and deduced a linewidth enhancement factor similar to the one in InAs/GaAs quantum dots.
Time-resolved four-wave mixing in an InAs/InGaAs/GaAs electrically pumped quantum-dot amplifier is measured at room temperature for different applied bias currents going from optical absorption to gain of the device. The four-wave mixing signal from 140 fs pulses shows a transition from a delayed photon-echo response in the absorption regime to a prompt free polarization decay in the gain regime. This corresponds to a pronounced reduction of the dephasing time from 250 fs at zero bias to less than 50 fs at the maximum applied current. The four-wave mixing response at transparency of the device shows a composite structure with both photon echo and free-polarization decay. This is a signature of the digital occupation number in quantum dots, resulting at transparency in a signal from dots occupied with either zero or two excitons corresponding to absorption or gain of the dot ground state.